


Impractical

by BooBalooPants



Category: Titanic (1997)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 14:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17326472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooBalooPants/pseuds/BooBalooPants
Summary: AU; Jack/Cal. A 'what if' or divergent sort of scenario, set after the Rose and Cal breakfast scene.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I like Cal. I know, he's a horrible brattish excuse for a human being, but there you go. I'm not trying to justify him. Like, at all. But he's also interesting to me. So is this pairing.
> 
> If you don't like the idea of this pairing...well. Best not to read on, eh? :)

Cal rolled the wine glass in his hand.

It was an unwise coffee substitute at 7.30 in the AM, but between the thunderous sound of his own heart beating in his ears, and the rage pulsing to reach trembling fingertips, he didn't much care.

And decent coffee was so hard to come by, even on the most luxurious of ships, apparently.

He watched, dispassionately, as Trudy finished cleaning up the mess on the promenade. Her eyes darted in his direction every now and then, as if he wouldn't notice.

_Stupid woman._

She was frightened of him. Perhaps not in the way Rose had been, but it was obvious now.

Cal leaned back against the door frame and massaged his temple, absorbing the realisation with a bitter smile. He took another shot of the so-so wine.

"Where is she?"

Trudy flinched as she looked up at him.

"In the bedroom, Mr. Hockley. With her mother. They're dressing for morning service."

"Of course."

Sir," said Trudy. "She-"

"You're dismissed."

It wasn't deliberate, but he sounded venomous even to his own ears. Trudy avoided his gaze as she excused herself from the promenade.

And then he was alone.

He rubbed at the tension between his eyes again, and began to wonder when it was that he'd lost sight of his fiancée's rebellions. Or had she always been like that, and he'd just never noticed it before?

_Hell if he knew. And it was a little late now._

Rose and her emotionally deadened face whenever she looked at him. How she seemed to become another woman, how quickly she transformed, whenever she looked at the steerage boy.

Cal curled his lip.

Dawson came together in his mind much more vividly than he would have liked. Or expected.

"Rather early for some alcoholic merriment isn't it, Mr. Hockley?"

Cal turned around.

"Good morning, Ruth."

Ruth, the mother-in-law desperately in-waiting, offered him a smile that could have cracked apart at any moment.

"Cal. We do hope you'll be joining us for morning service. I'm sure Rose will be in better spirits, then."

"Of course."

"Excellent. We'll see you there," her lips turned a crocodile-smile, like she could have placed her and her daughter's world upon his shoulders, and he was going to carry it all for them.

A weight so crass and heavy as the blue diamond he'd put too much stock into. It wasn't enough, and it never would be.

It was strange. How such sudden realisations made him smile, despite everything.

"See you, Ruth."

_A real man makes his own luck._

He swilled the wine around again, knocking back the last of it with an incredible lack of etiquette. Perhaps the closest he'd ever get to his own petty rebellion.

He wondered then, why his own luck seemed to have entirely deserted him.

8

8

He left the deck without telling Lovejoy.

He didn't tell anyone, and only began to doubt himself as he ducked down; into dim, yellowish lighting and narrow corridors. So many levels, quite literally, beneath him.

The engines sounded louder in the steerage dining hall, a humming vibration that was a constant but not intolerable background noise.

Cal was far more distracted by other things, anyway.

The eyes that tracked him, the murmurs of curiosity that passed between wary and suspicious steerage folk. As if  _he_  might have been the filth that had dared to desecrate someone else's fiancée.

He put it out of mind and nodded. A practised and polite smile he'd learnt long ago; something that came part and parcel with high society, that he'd never had any trouble with before.

"Hey. You seem kind of lost."

Cal forgot his smile, and turned round.

Jack Dawson was standing off to the side, hands in his pockets, like he'd been watching for a while.

He didn't look much different out of a tuxedo, really; still so earnest and open and friendly, and everything that infuriated Cal and gave him the strongest desire to hate him.

And still Cal had come looking for him anyway.

He could have laughed at himself.

_Fool._

"Morning, Dawson."

Someone jostled past them both, knocking Cal's shoulder.

Jack smirked. "You look nervous."

Cal forced another smile, as stubborn as his pride was.

"Can we talk somewhere...quieter?"

"You mean with fewer witnesses? No thanks."

"It isn't like that."

Jack didn't look convinced. He folded his arms and leaned back a bit against the wall. Strands of blond hair hung about his face, framing it in a way that should have looked unkempt, but wasn't quite.

"Surely you can afford me a little of your precious time, Dawson," Cal said, intending a sarcastic smile.

Jack hesitated.

"So what brings you to these parts?"

"I-" Cal stopped himself.

He tried to consider his words as if he might have planned them, but he hadn't, obviously.

Instead he was doing something quite unimaginable; he was being  _spontaneous_ , god help him.

He wanted to laugh again, maybe to quell his nerves. Or admit his own insanity.

"It's a matter of necessity," he decided, unable to think of any other reason. "...you owe me an explanation."

Damn it all, Dawson was right.

He  _was_  nervous.

Jack looked intrigued.

"Have you come here to threaten me, then? You know that Rose didn't-"

"Don't  _assume_ , Dawson," Cal snapped.

As if it mattered.

Strangely, Jack's mouth curved up a bit. He raised his hands, in a quiet sort of assurance. "Okay. Fine. I won't assume."

Cal nodded, at a loss of what else to do. He was caught in a foreign feeling. Something like gratitude, maybe?

"... _good_."

"Good."

The silence would have been far more uncomfortable, if not for the steady thrum of the ship and the conversational sounds of steerage all around them. People weren't really looking at Cal anymore.

They didn't really _care_. It was an odd sort of relief.

Cal cleared his throat.

"You were easier to find than I expected, Dawson."

Jack laughed.

"Do you know, you're the second person to request my attention in as many days? I'm not sure why I've suddenly become so in-demand," his eyes reflected something more thoughtful, when he looked at Cal. "With the first class passengers, especially."

Cal sneered. "Popular with all the classes, I suspect. Though I certainly can't imagine why."

He looked Jack properly up and down, noticing the scuffed edges of his boots, the tattered seams on the sleeves of his jacket. He looked messy and dirty and unfit for purpose as a human being.

Somehow he managed to pull it off, though.

Jack grinned some more.

"What can I say? I'm a charmer," he combed a hand through his hair. "Forgive me if I'm 'assuming' again, Cal. But I figure you're not here to invite me to another dinner party this evening?"

Cal's smile twitched. "You figured right."

"Cal, listen. Rose was just-"

"Don't defend her actions, Dawson. Your attempts at chivalry are of little use here, I can assure you."

Jack shrugged, like it didn't really matter anyway. There was the tiniest pause, and then he blew out a sigh.

"I just thought you should know, that's all. Nothing happened between us. Nothing at all, Cal."

Cal looked at him blankly.

Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of consolation. But it was more like knives, stabbing at the back of his throat.

_Nothing happened, indeed._

The insinuation, the mere  _possibility_  of it, was unbearable enough. It was like confirmation of the deceptive path he and his fiancée would be treading, even before their married life had begun.

_What a mess._

"Cal, I didn't-"

"Don't patronise me, Dawson."

"I'm not-"

" _Shut up_ ," Cal snapped, but it sounded brittle in his ears.

He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes for the briefest moment.

When he looked at Jack again, he felt his nerves unravelling.

"I know very well that Rose does not reciprocate or have any interest in my own affections for her."

He'd acknowledged the doubt before,  _of course he had._

But saying it aloud was different. Like a dream that had become real, and Jack Dawson, of  _all_  the wretched people that had stepped so inconsiderately into his life, was his sole witness to it.

"Cal-"

"But practicality is important," it was a weak reassurance, more to himself.

The sort of reasoning that he could hear himself saying in the dead of night, when the bed was lonely, and Rose had not come to him. She never did.

Dawson's stare was resolute as stone, never wavering, and Cal felt transparent.

For a few moments it was as though the steerage boy could see right through him, or else see all of his locked up thoughts. Those that were as well guarded as the fortunes in his safe, that nobody had any right nor reason to see.

It was more effective than any words might have been, as well.

Cal clenched his fists, nails biting redundantly into the palms of his hands. He glared at the ground. Those awful scuffed boots again.

" _Practicality?_ " Jack repeated, tonelessly.

Then he scraped a couple of chairs forward, and looked between them and Cal as if he had no choice but to take one.

You wouldn't understand," Cal muttered.

He took the seat. His legs felt heavy, like he'd been running for far too long.

"I'm sure I wouldn't," Jack pulled a cigarette from behind his ear. He lit up, before offering it to Cal. "What's a lowly steerage guy know, anyway?"

Cal glared at the cigarette. He was still angry, but not in the way he wanted to be anymore.

It was tiring; a relentless and dull sort of ache. Something that had probably been dwelling within him in the form of unforgiving migraines for a few weeks now. It would explain heated words, and the tiny shards of broken glass that still glittered across the promenade decking.

It would explain why Rose looked at him like a ghost, and then looked at Jack as though he were bringing her to life...

Cal snatched the cigarette, and took a long and desperately needed drag.

"I want to kill you," he said dully.

"Oh," Jack looked amused. "I see."

His eyes were very clear and blue as summer sky. They did not disguise kindheartedness very well. It was a fatal sort of weakness, so Cal thought.

Ironically he found himself completely weakened by it now.

"I guess you have every chance of getting away with murder on a ship like this."

Cal blinked. "...what?"

"Well. It's a big ship. Plenty of places to hide a body. Or even better, just chuck me overboard. I don't think anyone would notice, really," Jack's mouth quivered, like he wanted to laugh.

"Something amusing about the prospect of that, Dawson?"

"Not really," Jack leaned over, taking the cigarette off him. He took a long and drawn out drag, allowing Cal time to observe the almost constant serenity that lurked behind the blond's eyes. Like nothing could phase him.

How annoying.

"Dawson-"

"Is that really what you want, then?"

"What are you taking about?"

"Something...practical. That's what you said."

Cal smiled sardonically. "Like I told you, you wouldn't understand."

"Right," Jack rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "I'm just thinking. Maybe that's not what certain people want. You know?"

Cal scoffed.

"You presume yourself an expert on relationships now, do you, Dawson?"

"Not at all," Jack said quickly. "Just a thought."

Cal snatched the cigarette back off him.

"So keep your unchecked thoughts to yourself."

"Right. Fine."

" _Fine_."

Cal clenched his jaw; the tension running through his body was set rigid, but not entirely unwanted, in the same way another silence lingered. In some ways Cal could have embraced it, or accepted it as the unspoken standoff it was between them.

He couldn't resist his indignation though.

He bit his lip, and shattered the silence;

"I didn't say I  _wanted_  that, Dawson. I said it was  _important_. There's a difference."

"Oh?" Jack's mouth curved again. "And does it really make a difference to you?"

"Of course it does."

"I see," Jack nodded.

He didn't look very surprised.

He was good at looking like he knew everything, Cal realised. His youthful face was deceptive. It didn't quite reveal all the experience he'd probably had.

A pang of jealousy gripped at Cal's chest. He tapped a finger, in anxious habit, on the cigarette, and watched as the ashes fluttered dead to the floor. He smudged his shoe into the mess, with some grim satisfaction.

"Anyway, Dawson. We can both count at least  _one_  person who would notice and certainly mourn your absence on this ship."

Jack's expression sobered, only because he couldn't argue it.

He shifted in his chair. Even awkwardness suited him better.

"You still haven't told me exactly why you're here, Cal."

"Oh. How inconsiderate of me."

Cal exhaled hard, cigarette smoke snaking around them, as he tried to remember reason.

He was so close to a necessary resolution. The one in which he would warn Dawson off his fiancée, say his iced farewells, and that would be the end of it. Never have to look at the steerage boy again.

He could even see himself doing it, so automatically, within his mind's eye.

Could picture the stairway leading back up into the familiar comforts of first class, the commotion of clinking wine and brandy glasses, the encumbering fog of cigar smoke that made everyone's questionable smiles move into soft-focus, and become even more questionable still. And then the inevitable mingling into the beat of everyone else's conversation.

Conversations which Cal didn't much care for, nor even cared to remember.

And then trying to remember why he _should_  care was suddenly the hardest task in the world.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and blotted out the most reasonable answer.

"I know what Rose's intentions were that first night, Dawson," he spoke, through a beat of his own heart. "I know damn well what she meant to do."

He ignored Jack's startled face and swallowed the nausea that crept up his throat.

"Propellers, indeed. Of all the ridiculous excuses."

Jack just stared at him.

Cal smirked. He got a strange kind of satisfaction in watching Dawson's expression drop, like Cal had just revealed himself to be the most incredible monster.

Funny, he was almost getting used to that.

"...you  _knew_  Rose was suicidal?" said Jack.

Cal shook his head at the ground. "Of course not."

"Then how...?"

"I knew she was out of sorts, that's all. But I can put two and two together from there," he took a breath that was uncommonly fraught, and could feel his sneer breaking apart, when he met Jack's gaze again. "I'm not completely delusional, Dawson."

He rubbed his head, tempering another familiar pang that was already settling there. How overwhelming everything was, all of a sudden.

"But I tried my best with her, Dawson. I tried."

He could barely recognise his own voice in his ears; so depleted and shaken by unintended emotion. It should have been embarrassing, but for once it didn't matter.

It was as if the man sitting next to him held final judgement and fate in his hands, and it was hopeless, of course.

Cal knew that Jack wouldn't believe him.

Jack didn't give anything away, though. He had a good poker face, despite his kind eyes.

"She just feels trapped," Jack said quietly, after a moment. "That's what it is."

Cal laughed, unable to help himself.

"Aren't most of us?"

He flicked some more cigarette ash away, and stared past Jack's shoulder, noticing the bustle of people around them properly, for the first time.

The way a blissful and ragged couple laughed and linked arms with each other, just a few metres away. Still very appealing, even set against the off-colour and dull walls of the steerage hall. Their tatty clothes moved like lively ribbon as they danced, and their eyes glittered tears that were not unhappy.

Cal thought he could have stared at them forever, and it wouldn't have been such a terrible fate after all.

"Are you?" said Jack, and sounded like he already knew the answer. "Trapped, I mean?"

The hum of sound around them had faded away into nothing, and Cal thought that Jack could have been the only thing that existed in the world, for just a few ludicrous moments.

Cal tried to smile again, as their eyes locked together.

"Imagining another life...that is...impractical at best, Dawson."

He took a final drag on the cigarette, and then offered it back.

Jack's gaze softened.

"Cal, I-"

"Do you ever care about what anyone thinks of you, Dawson? Anyone at all?"

Jack's face barely flickered. Just a flash of recognition, but it was enough.

It was an unspoken thread of understanding that might have existed between them. Something that was familiar, and it made Cal's heart feel like it might not have to turn so black.

In his moment of weakness, he felt the hand covering his own, and couldn't pull away from it.

"No. I don't care," Jack said. "Not at all."

His fingers curved a bit, and Cal stared bleakly down at them.

There was dirt under fingernail, and smudges of it on skin that was such a coarse contrast to his own. The stereotype of every working class man that Cal had ever cared to imagine.

And still their fingers twined together, in a grip that was far too urgent, and within that moment Cal knew that Jack was so much luckier and far more enviable than he would ever be. With or without Rose on his arm.

"Neither should you."

"..what?" Cal said, his voice was too hoarse in his ears.

"You shouldn't care, Cal."

"...I don't."

Jack's smile was sad. "You're a good liar, aren't you?"

Cal opened his mouth, though words had deserted him, quite inconveniently.

Someone else spoke for him, anyway;

"There's a guy looking for you up top, me lord."

An Irishman's hand slapping his shoulder, accompanying a sarcastic comment, seemed a fitting interruption.

Cal and Jack's hands broke apart like skin burnt by fire, and the rest of the world seeped back into existence.

Cal snapped out of his seat, ruler straight.

"Forgive my general lack of articulation, Mr Dawson," he cleared his throat. "I'm not entirely sure why I came to see you, after all."

He held out his hand in a tired and automatic formality.

"All good intentions, I suppose."

Jack nodded, and they shook hands.

"You didn't kill me, at least."

"Regretfully, Dawson. I just don't have a very good aim."

"Hah. I see," Jack smiled at him.

Cal realised, in a detached sort of way, that he liked looking at it.

It allowed him a clarity he knew he would soon have to forget.

"Goodbye, Dawson."

He turned away, and there was the figure of Spicer Lovejoy, standing at steerage entrance. Cal started toward him.

"It's Jack, by the way."

Cal froze mid-step. His stomach coiled as he looked back round.

"Pardon me?"

"Please. Call me Jack."

The blonde's smile was hopeful. Or perhaps Cal was the one being hopeful about it.

_How ridiculous._

8

8

"Is everything alright, sir?" said Lovejoy.

Cal scoffed at the absurd broadness of the question.

"Wonderful," he said, a default response.

It rang true, for just an imagined instant. A snapshot of clear eyes and heartbeats that became much faster against careworn skin. Only if Cal thought about them for too long, though.

_How scandalous it would have been, too._

The reception was full of pristine faces and voices blurring together, and Rose was standing with her mother at the edge of the room. She looked at him, and then past him, as if he'd never been there at all.

Cal continued to greet and wave to the unending ebb of couples he couldn't remember the names of. The most appropriate levels of decorum shared out between them all, and still the glaring sadness of space that loomed between himself and his unhappy fiancée. His mother-in-law's disapproving face, always hovering in the background.

_'You shouldn't care.'_

He pressed the nib of a burnt out cigarette between his fingers. Another tiny rebellion.

_'...I don't.'_

He was a good liar, though.

"Sir, would you like some refreshments before service begins?"

Cal looked listlessly through his valet. "No. Thank you."

_'...I don't.'_

It was somehow easier though, when he remembered the laughing steerage couple.

_An imagined life._

He turned, and Lovejoy's voice and everyone else's faded away, as he walked out of the reception room.

It was a flight of insanity, his better judgement might inform him.

Luckily, he had no need for that right now.

Jack was waiting for him at the top of the stairway.

Cal's mouth cracked into a smile that didn't come often enough.

_Impractical, at best._

"Hello, Jack."

88

88

 


	2. Improper

88

88

The trouble with spontaneity was that it didn't pay much regard for consequence.

Cal shifted on the balls of his feet. He was light-headed, and everything seemed like a surreal dream.

This was a  _terrible_  consequence, and thus probably a huge mistake.

"Having second thoughts already?"

" _No_."

A lie of course, but Cal couldn't bear Jack being right again.

He pursed his lips and stared ahead, at the immense stretch of blue-green ocean.

Usually words would just flow from him, with a steady and reliable smoothness. Elegant conversation that had sealed his charming position amongst the other socialites, and had certainly helped guarantee Rose's hand. Now he was rendered temporarily mute.

His tongue had turned to clay and his throat was too dry.

"Won't someone be looking for you? That erm...that servant guy?"

" _Valet_ ," Cal said. "He's my valet."

Facts were manageable. He could answer to those sorts of things well enough, if only because there was no disputing them.

"Valet," Jack repeated the word experimentally. "So. Won't he be looking for you right now?"

"If he's doing his job correctly he won't be."

"Ah. Very discrete service, is he?"

Cal prickled, and finally turned his glare away from the sea.

He looked at Jack properly.

It was difficult, though. He'd not been able to look at him since walking out onto the damn decking.

"You think I do this sort of thing all the time, Dawson?"

Jack shrugged.

He was shading his eyes against the bright mid-morning sun, watching Cal with a cautious flash in his eyes. It wasn't suspicious or anything like that, though. More like he was trying to figure something out.

Cal didn't like it. It reminded him that Jack wasn't stupid at all.

"I don't know," Jack said. "Maybe? I don't really know you."

Cal grimaced. "You certainly don't."

He turned back to look at the sea.

It was strange, he didn't usually pay it much mind at all. Just a necessary expanse of water that they had to move through in order to get to the next destination.

Now, with the sun touching it's mirror-calm and sparkling surface, dots of gulls occasionally bobbing along, it was almost pretty.

"Rose will be wondering where you are," Jack said.

Cal gripped the rail, and wanted to laugh.

"You have a cruel sense of humour, Dawson."

"I'm not joking. She probably is."

Then Cal did laugh.

"If she  _is_ wondering, she certainly won't be looking for me, Dawson. So we needn't worry about that."

"I'm not worried," Jack said. "I told you to call me 'Jack', remember."

He leaned slightly over the rail, peering down into the sea with the carelessness of a child. It made Cal feel sick.

As if anyone could be so blasé, so  _reckless,_  about anything.

"I shouldn't be here," it was a dim realisation, made far too late. "I don't know why I am."

"Do you  _want_  to be here?"

"Obviously," Cal said immediately. "So obviously I've lost my damned mind."

"Because you're doing something you want to do?"

Cal snorted, and wondered how the steerage boy managed to make everything so simple and apparent.

And yet it was inarguable.

_Lost my damned mind._

Cal frowned. He wouldn't let Jack win that one, either.

"You're very presumptuous, aren't you, Dawson?"

"Just observing."

Jack's eyes didn't leave his own, and though he was stubborn, Cal found himself averting his gaze back to the sea. It was easier.

He focused more attentively on the jagged shape of the distant waves; how they foamed up into rhythmic patterns that he could begin to predict, the longer he looked at them.

"I understand if you hate me, Cal," Jack said plainly. "And I'm sorry for any trouble I've caused."

The waves rose up, crashing against the hull of the ship, and Cal pretended they were more interesting.

"I don't hate you."

"No?" Jack sounded pleased and surprised.

Cal smiled, despite himself.

"Who were you waiting for, Dawson?"

"What?"

"Rose would have come to you this morning, if she had known you were waiting at the stairway. She's probably waiting for you even now, as we speak."

"Don't be-"

"Do you still have arrangements to meet her?"

Within a short but telling silence, Cal realised how ridiculous it all was; meeting the object of his fiancées affections, and attempting to goad him for an answer which he wasn't supposed to want or hear about. The ultimate betrayal of his fiancée.

But much worse than that; an entirely numb feeling to the very idea of it. As though it didn't even matter.

Jack made a sound like a sigh.

"I think Rose is waiting for something more than this."

" _Nonsense_. She's already in love with you."

"She's not just a lovesick teenager, Cal."

"No?" Cal tilted his head, rolling his eyes in frustration at the patchy sky. "Then what would you call it? An infatuation, perhaps? A little flight of fancy? Something she'll forget about when we eventually get off of this _damned ship_ -"

"Cal..."

Fingers found Cal's shoulder. He flinched back automatically.

" _Don't,_ Dawson."

"Sorry," Jack said.

Cal shook his head, attempting to be dismissive, though all his limbs seemed like they were on edge.

"It doesn't matter. Lovesick teenager or not, this is myself and Rose's predicament. And not your business, Dawson."

"But that's not the point, is it?"

"No?" Cal squeezed the rail harder. Gritted his teeth. "What  _is_  the point?"

"That neither of you are happy."

"That's your opinion."

"That's just what I see."

Cal pulled a face, and twisted away from the rail. But Jack's face was there, and it was too honest and too difficult to argue with, or even turn away from.

He managed to hold Jack's stare at least, this time.

"Well. Whatever you might 'see' is of no consequence to you in the end, Dawson."

"Then why are you here right now, Cal?"

The question was posed like a challenge, no matter how offhandedly and innocent Jack played it.

And Cal realised, in private despair, that he couldn't answer to it at all. He pushed a hand through his hair, searching for a default answer that would not come to him.

"You didn't tell me," he said instead, softly and through a halting breath. "Who you were waiting for on the stairway."

Jack took a step forward, and then reached out, very tentatively.

Fingers curled on Cal's shoulder, giving it the tiniest squeeze. And this time Cal did not flinch away.

_Lost my damned mind._

"Come with me."

88

_Having second thoughts already?_

Second thoughts or not, it was all a little late now.

The steerage dining hall was nothing if not functional for a 'party', and even if it had the distinct odour of sweat and cheap beer, it wasn't actually anything unpleasant.

The room was buzzing with laughter and stomping and music, and Cal wanted to smile.

His standards hadn't dropped, he realised. He'd simply discarded the notion of them altogether. Temporarily.

It made everything so much lighter, or softer around the edges. Though that may have been the alcohol. He wasn't sure, and he'd already had too much to count.

And Jack was laughing at him, for some reason.

"Here," Jack said, and leaned forward, his hands moving and fingers finding Cal's collar in the smallest instant.

He undid those first couple of buttons with an ease Cal might have wondered more about, if only his mind had been more present.

Instead he just stared questionably at Jack.

"That's better," Jack said, as if it might be a decent explanation. He leaned back in his chair, mouth curving up and eyes roguish, looking Cal up and down for a few long and intended seconds. " _Much_  better."

Cal felt at his undone collar, where the skin was uncommonly exposed, and where Jack was still staring at him. An unconscious swallow in his throat, and a brief heat crawled up his cheeks.

"You're indecent, Dawson," he managed to say.

"I am?" Jack looked pleased about it.

"Yes.  _Filthy_ , even."

Jack laughed, his eyes glittering.

He stood up, making a grand gesture to where a little girl was waiting for him.

Cal watched them dance together, until their shapes had merged into the crowd and they were lost, and voices were becoming echoes and colours were becoming blurs. It wasn't distressing at all, and Cal listened to the idle chatter around him with an intent that was absurd in itself, since he couldn't understand a word most of them were saying anyway.

"Want to dance?"

Cal felt the hand on his shoulder. He glanced up at Jack, and hoped he looked irritated.

"Suppose this is where you had your debauched time with my fiancée last night?"

Jack's grin abated. "It was fun. She had fun. She danced."

"I'm sure she did."

"So, do you want to?"

"I..." Cal blinked in confusion.

For a moment he could have taken Jack seriously; his palm was open, feigning the lead of a dance, and he likely would have done if Cal had decided to call his bluff...

"Don't be absurd," Cal said instead. Internally chastised himself for considering it.

Jack laughed, his hand not leaving Cal's shoulder.

Cal hesitated.

"I wouldn't mind directions to a nearby restroom, though."

"Certainly, sir."

Jack grabbed Cal's arm, pulling him through the cliques of people with such an enthusiastic purpose that it made Cal feel giddy.

He staggered forward, almost falling into Jack, and Jack whirled round in the same beat. His expression turned into immediate concern.

"Are you alright? Oh jeez...this was a bad idea, wasn't it?"

Despite the way Jack's face seemed to blur and spin, Cal laughed at him.

"...I think I'm rather drunk, Dawson."

"I see."

"How embarrassing."

Jack shook his head as though it were nothing, and led them the rest of the way through a door, into a small steerage W.C.

It was entirely empty and much cooler, and the walls were modest and muted. The thud of people outside had diminished into silence, and Cal felt like his senses might slowly be returning to him.

He rubbed his head and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes, enjoying the simple sensation of peacefulness for a minute.

"Sorry about this," Jack said. "I thought I'd try and show you a good time."

He did sound sorry, and Cal could imagine his face very easily. He smiled a bit.

"What a ridiculous situation this is, Dawson. It's barely past noon and I am an incredible mess."

"You don't look so bad to me."

Cal opened his eyes.

Jack was much closer than he'd expected. Close enough that he could see the small flecks of darker blue in his eyes, and then the tug of his mouth, as it began to blur. The tilt of his head...

"Dawson-"

And Jack's mouth pressed, light but deliberate, onto his own. How soft it was.

Cal forgot himself within the tiny moment; and an utterance that was supposed to have been a protest, was soon melting into a soft hum of pleasure. Something that he didn't even know he possessed...

Then he remembered everything else.

"... _no_ ," he tilted his head away, back against the wall, and glared at the red-wrought floor. "Not that."

Jack quickly stepped back, hands falling to his sides.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." he stopped again. "I'm very sorry."

He was an actual gentleman about it, just to rub salt in the wound.

Cal rubbed his head, the thrums of a headache that was not alcohol-induced finding him at last. How typical.

He laughed bitterly.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"Everything," Cal realised, more to himself. "I'm afraid this has been a terrible mistake."

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

 _"_ Please," Cal tried to sneer. _"_ Don't be."

He turned away in a rush, and fumbled with his collar, trying and failing to fasten it back up again. His fingers trembled and did not want to cooperate. He felt like a useless child.

"... _damn it all_..."

He was stilled, so suddenly, by Jack's hand on his own.

Cal tried to offer a defiant glare, but it was pointless. Jack's hold didn't waver, and his fingers grazed Cal's with a resolve that was matched only by his eyes.

"Here, Cal. Let me do it."

Cal nodded curtly, unable to do anything else.

Jack's hands were so precise and careful, and Cal could barely breathe through such insignificant seconds.

"It's a shame, though. Looks better undone."

"Improper," Cal corrected weakly.

"Improper suits you," Jack decided. He finished up the collar with a resigned sort of smile. "There. All finished."

"...thank you."

Cal blinked; the room was still spinning and now he felt quite sick as well.

He knew he wasn't fit company for Rose nor Ruth nor anybody else in the upper decks.

He was inebriated and also entering the clutches of an unforgiving migraine, and Jack was already looking at him with an incredible amount of concern.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Not especially," Cal admitted.

"I'd offer you my bed to lie down in for a while, but that's probably improper too."

"...extremely..."

"But I don't think that's the problem right now."

Jack sounded muffled, and his face was too close, as was the rest of him. There was a dusty but not unpleasant scent about him.

Then Cal realised he was sinking against Jack, and that he was going to pass out.

It was distantly humiliating, but Cal was too sick to worry about it.

"...improper..." he murmured anyway, before the lights went out.

As if that would have made a difference.

88

He woke up to the underside of a bunk bed and the soft hum of engine. Remnants of a dream scattered about his mind; something to do with the steerage boy, and propositions of a dance, and soft lips.

"Are you feeling much better?"

_Oh, but it wasn't a dream._

Cal sat up at once, combating the dull ache in his head. It was annoying, but not unbearable anymore.

"I'm very well," he murmured. "And humiliated."

"You're also an impressive lightweight."

"Not the drink," Cal rubbed his head again. "Well. Mostly not."

Jack's face turned sombre.

"Are you usually very ill?"

"Just migraines. Damned inconveniences."

Jack nodded slowly, and offered him a glass of water.

"I gotta say. I'm a little more relieved that this isn't entirely my fault."

He budged a bit closer, and moved the glass toward Cal's lips.

Cal hesitated, staring through the water at Jack's rippling face.

"Usually I would retreat to a dark place. I'm not sure the steerage setting helps in the same way."

Jack tilted the glass up. "But you had a little fun, right?"

Cal drank and drank, until the glass was empty and water was trickling down his chin. He wiped his mouth, in a small effort to retain some dignity, before settling Jack a careful look.

"It was different, Dawson."

"Shall I that as a compliment?"

"Take it however you like."

Jack pondered it for mere seconds.

"A compliment, then," he said, and then stretched his arms out, like he'd been sitting for too long and his joints were stiff.

Cal wondered, vaguely, how late it was. There was a small port hole window in the bunk, and an orange-glow was streaming through it onto the starchy bed sheets.

Not so terribly late, then.

Cal shifted, feet touching the floor with a strange tentativeness. Jack moved quickly back, as if he had become far too aware of the proximity between them.

They sat there and stared ahead, at the other empty bunk bed. It was quiet, but Cal was more resigned than awkward to it.

"I guess you-"

"Is that-"

They both stopped talking.

"You first," said Jack.

"Is that your sketchbook?" Cal pointed at sheets of paper, poking through a bound pad that lay on the floor.

"Oh, yeah," Jack scooped it up, gathering the loose papers together rather hastily. He closed the pad. "You know. My doodlings."

"Rose rather likes your doodlings, doesn't she?"

"Perhaps she's being kind."

"That'd be my tactic. If I cared about kindness, that is."

Jack smiled at him. "You must like _some_  art."

"It doesn't appeal to me in the way it appeals to Rose," Cal kept his eyes on the sketchbook. " Or yourself, clearly."

"Nonsense. Anyone can like art. You don't need to think about it, you just like what you like."

Cal smirked. "Easy as that, is it?"

"Sure. You just haven't seen a piece you really like yet."

"I suppose I haven't."

"Once you see something you like, something that really  _inspires_  you, you just  _know it,_ " Jack said, his voice so full of insistence.

Cal stared at him. He looked so impassioned as he spoke. Cal thought it was inspiring by itself.

_Oh._

"You talk so soft," Cal muttered. "Do I really have any cause to wonder why Rose fell for you?"

Jack scoffed, and still seemed to get closer.

"She hasn't fallen for me, Cal."

"But you were waiting for her. Don't lie to me, Jack."

Jack's mouth moved into a thin line.

"Does it bother you?"

"No," Cal realised. He didn't have to think about it. "Not now."

Jack's smile quivered. "Good."

His hand slipped around Cal's back.

Cal barely reacted; he dared not move, in case he gave anymore of himself away. Even recalling a fleeting kiss was too much, and his heart was pounding too loudly in his ears to think very clearly.

"You're shaking," Jack said.

His endless concern was touching.

"I'm fine," Cal told him.

He wasn't, because he knew that he wouldn't have denied Jack anything at all in that moment.

"Okay."

A mouth finding his own was evidence enough of that.

The sketchbook dropped on the floor, and Cal dropped back onto the bed in the same motion.

Jack hung above him, hungry and lustful and determined all at once, the orange glow of midday sun haloing his outline like a hazy dream.

His hand tapered along shirt, fingers unsteady in their excitement.

"What are you doing?" Cal asked faintly.

"Looks better," Jack said, through a heated breath. "...undone."

And then kissed him again, much more deeply.

Cal opened his mouth with a muffled moan, compliance reaching him so effortlessly and naturally that he didn't even have the mind to protest it anymore. It was fairly pointless, and his chest ached in the best sort of way.

They broke apart in a panting flush, and seconds hung frozen, like baited breath, around them. Waiting for the inevitable consequence of what they'd done.

But Cal couldn't do anything at all, except stare at Jack.

Absently notice the way the corners of his mouth twitched, whenever he looked like he was going to grin.

And then he did.

"...I'm guessing this is pretty improper too, huh?"

Cal tilted his head to the side; a dazed sort of bliss reaching him, as a mouth pressed to his jawline.

"...very improper..."

And he found that he didn't much care that it was, no matter what the consequence.

 


	3. Impossible

_It wasn't supposed to happen like that._

He'd never been kissed like that before. It was almost too much.

Heart pounding at his ribcage, but still somehow wanting to escape through his mouth. Electricity that possessed his entire body, putting it on the edge of an anticipation he didn't even know that he needed.

It was all those clichéd ideas of passion and more.

Those that probably belonged in some trashy literature, or imaginations that were far too fantastical and ridiculous by half. The sort he should have been scornful about.

But Jack's mouth was so heated and urgent.

And Cal  _moaned_.

"...Dawson..."

His fingers coiled and clung to quilt cover, as if that might anchor his mind again, but of course it didn't. There were teeth and tongue trailing his neckline, and Jack was completely devouring him.

Another moan. He couldn't help it.

Then, through the dim fuzz of his mind, he heard echoing footsteps. Voices coming from a place that could have been another world.

_It wasn't supposed to happen like that._

"... _stop_..."

He pressed a hand to Jack's chest, pushing him away and lurching upright all at once. His stomach twisted, heart in mouth, and they both waited for the door to open.

It never did, and the voices and footsteps passed after what seemed an age.

Jack looked at Cal, a smile ghosting his pink mouth.

"That was close," he started to laugh, a hand moving to reach Cal's.

"I have to go," Cal said, wiping his mouth.

He stood up, perhaps too quickly, and a spell of dizziness reached him. His head was burning, but not in the usual way of a migraine.

"Cal, wait...are you alright?"

" _Fine_ , Dawson."

He started toward the door, but Jack was too persistent, and his fingers scrunched into Cal's shirt, keeping him in place for just a moment.

" _Please_. Can't we just talk a minute?"

Cal sneered, automatically.

When he looked at Jack he could have imagined and said a thousand derogatory things. He had a well worn arsenal of them, cocked and loaded, ready and waiting on the tip of his poisonous tongue. Words were easy weapons, and Jack was nobody.

But his head was still burning and a heat was prickling all over his body. The devastating aftershock of whatever had happened between them.

And Jack's hand was still there.

_It wasn't supposed to happen like that._

Cal gripped the door handle.

"No reason for me to talk to filth," he heard himself say.

A terrible silence dragged between them, and Cal became stuck in an absurd moment of regret.

"I'm not filth," Jack said, finally. "Or you wouldn't have let me do that."

Cal watched his knuckles whiten on the door handle for some painful seconds, before he opened it.

"Goodbye, Dawson."

Jack's voice echoed down the corridor after him, but Cal couldn't stand to look back.

8

His head was buzzing before he reached B deck.

There were faces that appeared familiar only in small instances; like idle small talk at the dinner table last night, or maybe polite smiles and greetings in passing at the reception room or on the deck.

Now they were all looking at him as though he'd emerged from a pit; raised brows and murmured sounds that would have been a damnation at any other time in his life.

For now though he just needed to escape. Only for a little while.

"...Mr. Hockley?"

Cal turned around, disorientated by the sight of a high-status couple he probably should have recognised.

"...you alright? You look rather a fright, old man."

Cal smiled and nodded weakly in the gentleman's direction, and hoped it was enough.

He navigated the rest of the way through the corridors in a rush; combing a hand through tangled hair, attempting to fasten buttons and straighten a collar that only reminded him of another's precise and deliberate fingers. It made his own tremble some more.

" _Damn it_ -" he cursed, and collided with a far more familiar face.

"Sir," Lovejoy said, and offered him a gracious nod.

The valet briefly looked Cal up and down, and seemed to play oblivious to his dishevelled appearance.

"Mrs. DeWitt Bukater has been asking after you for the better part of the afternoon."

Cal could have laughed.

_Of course it would be Ruth._

"I was feeling out of sorts," Cal said. He hesitated. "And what of Rose?"

"She's in the company of Mrs. Dewitt too."

"Very well."

He slumped back against the wall, slowly massaging his temple.

It wasn't a relief or anything close to that, but he thought he might collapse if the tension continued to gnaw at his bones.

"Sir...?"

"Tell them I've been out of sorts, that's all. It can't be helped, Lovejoy."

Lovejoy cleared his throat, but it was like something more than an affirmation.

"If that's what Mr. Hockley wants."

Cal blinked up at him.

The valet was always so impossibly professional, as it should be, but the hard edge had diminished from his eyes now, and the thin line of his mouth moved just a bit. Concern looked strange on his face.

Cal felt himself smiling, however weakly.

"Everything is quite fine, Lovejoy."

Lovejoy nodded. "And...the Dawson boy?"

" _Dealt_  with," Cal turned away. "Tell the Dewitt's that I won't be joining them for dinner this evening either. Regrettably. I'm still feeling...out of sorts."

It wasn't a lie.

8

8

Perhaps it was the drink.

A bad influence on the senses, that was all. Something that made bewildering actions seem reasonable in the heat of the moment.

Cal dropped down onto the bed, trying to console himself with the thought.

He blinked slowly, and though the room tilted with the suggestion of drunkenness, he could still taste Jack on his lips, and his heart beat a little faster as he recalled everything else.

He closed his eyes, unsteady fingers tracking the remembered trail of Jack's mouth.

The hungry and forced press upon jaw, and then throat and neckline. The dusty scent of skin and sweat that had entirely overwhelmed him, fresh on his own clothes, even  _now_.

Cal bowed his head into the scent, inhaling and exhaling with a harshness that made his chest shudder.

A warm wetness slid down his cheeks.

8

He didn't usually dream, or if he did he often forgot, or didn't care to remember.

This time he remembered.

Something about waves swirling patterns in the sea, and a boat adrift that had too many people on it. It was nighttime, and they might have been people he knew, but they were too far away to be able to know for sure.

A pounding in his head woke him up, until he realised it was actually someone knocking at the door.

"...are you there? Cal?"

Cal sat up, chest tightening with the sound of Jack's voice.

"Dawson?" he said anyway.

"Hey. You're okay?"

Cal stared blankly at the door.

"Yes."

"Can I...can I come in?"

"Of course not."

There was a pause, in which Cal held his breath, conflicted by the idea of Jack being cooperative and just walking away. Out of sight and out of life altogether. It would have been easier that way too, perhaps.

But Jack wasn't like that.

"I can't," he said. "I mean...I need to talk to you first. Then I'll leave."

Cal stood up, wiping an arm roughly over his eyes. He stepped closer to the door.

"I demand you leave  _now_ , Dawson. Or else I'll have you arrested."

He took another breath, waiting for Jack to relent.

The quiet extended, and his heart began to sink, quite involuntarily.

Then Jack spoke again;

"You'll have to arrest me, then."

Cal groaned, and looked uselessly up at the ceiling. Caught in a bizarre sort of turmoil that was both terrifying and exciting.

His heart was beating in his ears again, and Jack would not leave. Of course he wouldn't.

In a surge of decisiveness, Cal angrily unlocked the door.

Jack was leaning against the nearest wall, hands in pockets and seemingly careless to the rest of the world. He straightened when he looked at Cal, mouth curving up a bit.

"Hey."

"What do you want?" Cal snapped.

He pulled Jack the rest of the way into the room, closing and locking the door behind them.

Jack staggered in, eyes momentarily lighting up on his surroundings. Then he turned back round to Cal, smile becoming softer, or perhaps concerned.

"Are you feeling much better?"

Cal glared at him. "How the hell did you find my suite?"

Jack shrugged. "Is it very relevant?"

"Of course it is. I'll have them arrested too."

Jack walked across to the other side of the room, as if Cal hadn't said anything. He knelt down to a row of unmounted paintings, and made a soft whistling sound.

" _Monet_."

Cal clenched his jaw, and tapped his foot, staring at Jack's crouched and insolent back.

"Somehow I  _severely_  doubt you're here to admire my fiancées awful paintings."

Jack looked over his shoulder, offering a grin that might have been apologetic.

"They're just impressive, you know."

Cal turned away. "I don't personally understand the attraction."

He made a hurried beeline for the nearby cabinet, and took a tumbler from it, pouring himself a drink that burned down his throat before he'd barely looked at it.

And then another. Rinse and repeat.

"I'm guessing you haven't actually been prescribed that medication for your migraines?"

Cal knocked back another, and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

" _Haha_. Be quick, Dawson. Just tell me what you want."

"What I want?" Jack stood up. He looked confused.

" _Yes_.  _Whatever_  you want," Cal impatiently drummed the tumbler to his nails, letting alcohol dance and splash around the edges. "I have money. Plenty of it, as you're aware. Just name your price."

"I don't want your money."

Cal flinched at the words, and observed Jack's shocked face with what he hoped was a sneer.

"But it's my word against yours, Jack. And which one of us are they going to believe, really? I'm offering you the better option here."

Realisation crossed Jack's face all at once. He looked horrified.

"Cal, I wouldn't...I'm not here for anything like that."

Cal shook his head. His eyes trawled the room, a reckless sort of desperation finding him.

"Let's not needlessly draw this out, for God's sake."

"But I don't want anything..."

Cal walked quickly into the safe room, trying to ignore the protesting pry of Jack's voice.

A mindless automation switched on within him as he opened the safe door, and began rifling through wads of cash. His hands were shaking, but only slightly. Jack wouldn't notice.

"Here, Dawson. There's plenty here, in case you need to ease that wretched saintly conscience of yours..."

"Cal-"

"Just take the damn money-"

" _Cal!"_

A hand grabbed his wrist, holding it steady. Then there was breath, heated and close to his neck. Cal froze, recalling the sensation vividly.

_It wasn't supposed to happen like that._

He glared at the wads of money, clutched too tight in his hand.

The futility of it all suddenly became so clear to him.

He laughed, and it was edged with nerves.

"Cal?" Jack said, cautiously.

Cal blinked, trying to recompose himself.

"I gave her a diamond."

"...what?"

"I gave Rose a  _diamond,_  " Cal glanced to the side, noticing intricate patterns on wallpaper. "She hated it. She didn't say so, of course. But I know she did."

He lifted his head, fractionally aware of the hand still curled over his own.

There was a small wall mirror in front of them both, and Jack was watching him in it, very intently.

"Rose doesn't want things like that, Cal."

"She doesn't want me," Cal corrected.

He released the money, letting it spill onto the counter.

Jack's hand didn't move, though.

"Does that matter anymore?" he asked.

His face was so close that Cal could have counted the tiny lines of his lips, and how much he still wanted them, as they moved into the kindest shape of an earnest smile.

Cal swallowed the thought, and quickly pulled the diamond out of the safe.

He held it up to the mirror, where it's reflection hung heavy and looked unremarkable.

"It's nice," said Jack, like it was an obligation.

"So take it."

Jack's eyes widened in the mirror.

"What? No-"

"Money isn't an issue. I have the insurance. And we can both keep our dignity," Cal hesitated, around another sneer. "Or more what is left of mine."

" _No."_

The firmness in Jack's voice was more surprising than anything else; even more than the way he so bodily turned Cal around, jolting him with hands that were hard and tense on his shoulders.

"Cal. I don't want your money. I never came here for anything like that. Hell...I hardly even know  _why_  I came here," he paused, in a moment of revelation. "...I guess I just wanted to make sure you're alright."

Cal blinked, feigning a disinterest that made his throat feel dry.

"Then I'm alright," he said flatly. "I'm fine."

"I don't believe you."

"Hah. You are a fool, Dawson."

Jack didn't seem to care about insults. His fingers dug harder into Cal's shoulders, and he jolted him again, just a bit.

"You're drunk. And you're not thinking clearly."

Cal laughed.

"But clearly enough to see that you're still unable to take advantage of me," his smile slipped, with an embittered realisation."Though I suppose that's what common decency is, isn't it?"

"Cal-"

"Tell me, Dawson," Cal interrupted sharply. "How am I ever supposed to hate you?"

He bowed his head, laugh dissolving into a broken sigh.

"Because it appears to be...quite impossible, actually."

The harsh grip on his shoulders eased away then, before he realised that Jack's arms were moving all around him instead, in a careful but wanting embrace.

Cal sunk into it. Apparently he couldn't rescue his own reputation anymore, either.

"Isn't it easier just to like me, then?" Jack murmured, close to his ear. "Like before."

Cal closed his eyes, through a sharp intake of breath.

"It was...it was just a lapse in character, Dawson. That's all."

But he lifted his arms anyway, in a slow and tentative gesture, and returned the embrace.

The pulse of alcohol was still dizzying, but he was present enough to know that he didn't want to let go, as pathetic as it was.

"You don't have to make excuses," Jack said, as if he'd read his thoughts."It's okay."

Then he gently clasped the back of Cal's head, pulling him in.

Cal's senses must have torn apart with the kiss.

He only vaguely registered his back sliding against the wall, and hands tugging at shirt and tie, as if physically trying to pull him apart. His heart might have been fluttering in his throat.

He moaned, and Jack's mouth curved into a smile against his own. A hand caught his jaw in a soothing motion, as the kiss broke apart;

"Please tell me. If you want to stop," Jack said.

His eyes were bright and his face was flushed with desire.

The remains of whatever passed for Cal's rationale flickered in his mind, for just a hazy moment; an entitled socialite mingling amongst other socialites, visions of a disapproving father, and all the judgement that came with it. And Rose.

And _Rose_.

But Rose did not care, and perhaps Jack did not care either, but at least he was here.

Cal's chest quaked, and he dipped his head into the hollow of Jack's shoulder, mouth barely daring to graze the skin there.

"Please...do whatever you want with me, Dawson."

Jack pressed a kiss to his head. "It's 'Jack', remember."

Cal laughed faintly, as the wall became prominent against his back again, and teeth scraped a collarbone that wasn't supposed to have been exposed.

He looked toward the dark oak ceiling, attempting to gather just a little of his senses together.

Instead his vision fluttered, as Jack's hand found the tenderest part of him.

He gasped, fingers biting involuntarily at shirt, and dropped the diamond on the floor.

88

88

"I asked Rose."

"What?" Cal straightened up on the bed.

He was already self-conscious; bed covers twisted all around them, clothes strewn about the place with what was once a passionate abandon, now just seemed like a terrible mess.

"I asked Rose which room you were staying in," Jack explained. "I said I wanted to come straighten things out with you. She was happy to tell me."

"Rose did as you asked her?" Cal began pulling his breeches on, budging away from the bed some more. "Small miracles, I suppose."

"Well. When you ask someone nicely it does help."

"I always have."

"Not this morning, so I heard."

Cal's hands faltered within the effort of buttoning up his shirt. There were a couple missing, and he wondered absently how Jack had managed to do that.

"You want to defend Rose now? That's rich, Dawson. We've both essentially betrayed her," he paused, and considered the thought with a nauseous smile.

It was still sinking in, really.

He sighed. "Is my life over, now?"

"Doesn't have to be that dramatic," Jack said, and his mouth touched Cal's neck. "At least Rose would be free of a marriage she doesn't want."

Cal tilted his head, to look at Jack properly. "You're so charming, Dawson."

"But isn't it true?"

"I suppose," Cal finished up the buttons on his shirt, attempting to ignore the hands that were already moving around his chest, trying to undo him again. "And what of you? I believe you've already broken her heart."

Jack didn't say anything; it was the sort of hesitancy that made Cal's stomach twist.

He smiled weakly at the floor.

"Unless you plan to do that to me, of course."

He stood up before Jack could answer, straightening out his shirt and breeches, and smoothing a hand through his hair. He practised a vague smile at an imaginary person, before going back into the safe room.

The diamond was still on the floor where he'd left it, gleaming prettily. Cal picked it up, and when he turned back around Jack was standing right in front of him, dressed, and with a serious expression.

"Nothing happened with Rose, Cal. I told you that."

Cal smiled sarcastically. "So then. Am I supposed to wait and see which of us you'd prefer?"

"Don't talk so stupid."

"I'm being  _reasonable_ ," Cal baulked at his own words. "Though only God knows why..."

He trailed off, as Jack's hands cupped his face.

 _Oh yes,_  that _was why._

He would have let it all happen again, if not for the sharp knock on the door.

"...Hockley?" it was Ruth's voice.

Cal and Jack looked between each other in a brief panic. Cal cleared his throat.

"Just a moment," then he steeled himself.

He pressed the diamond into Jack's hand, before he could react.

Jack stared at him as if he'd actually lost his mind. It was certainly up for debate.

"I already told you. I'm not going to tell anyone about this."

Cal hurried out the room, waving away the words like an irritant. He scanned the bedroom for his shoes.

"Nice as the sentiments are, Dawson, I can't exactly count on them."

"You mean you can't  _trust_  me."

Cal flinched. "It isn't so simple as that."

"It _is_ ,"

Jack's fingers found his own, as he dropped the diamond back into his hand. Cal looked at it, feeling hopeless.

"I have so much more to lose."

"Mr Hockley?" said Ruth's voice again. She sounded impatient, if not suspicious.

"You won't lose anything," Jack said. "I promise."

The certainty in his voice was admirable, and Cal could have believed it.

Then the knocking on the door stopped, and there was the jangling noise of keys in lock.

Jack grabbed Cal's wrist, squeezing it tight.

"I  _promise_."

Cal clenched his jaw, in a moment of indecision that he knew was entirely pointless. He rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"...very well, then."

As they ran out the back room, Cal thought, in the grand scheme of things, he would soon have very little left to lose anyway.

 

 


	4. Impulse

Running was usually easy.

But Cal couldn't recall the last time he'd ran and  _ran,_  and wondered where he was running to. Or even what he might be running _from_.

It was  _exciting_ , and Jack did not let go of his wrist.

People transformed into faceless obstacles, lost in time, along with the fade-outs of their voices. The sounds of engine were getting louder, more deafening, and flumes of steam blasted into their faces, before they'd even begun to slow down.

"Where are we going?" Cal said.

"I don't know," Jack was laughing,  _of course he was_ , and though it was small comfort (actually, it was none at all), Cal thought it contagious, and could have laughed too.

He didn't, and slowed to a stop, frowning severely at Jack.

" _Jack_. Where are we?"

"Hm," Jack looked around them both, and shrugged. "Somewhere in luggage, I guess."

"How lovely," Cal muttered.

He took a moment to compose himself, pulling a hand through his hair, which was damp with sweat. His chest was pounding, undecided between adrenaline and exhaustion, and then he attempted another glare in Jack's direction.

"Why did you think this would be a good idea again?"

"I wasn't really thinking anything," Jack admitted, but didn't seem to care. He was still grinning too much. "Isn't it great, though?"

Cal looked about disdainfully.

"It is anything but 'great', Dawson."

They were definitely in the cargo hold; there were transport vehicles and crates of luggage all around them, and a soft amber glow filtered through a nearby door window, suggesting they were close to the engine rooms themselves. It would explain the constant vibration against the ground, and the heat that blazed skin like a humid day.

Cal leaned back against the wall, tipping his head up to properly catch his breath.

"I must be mad."

He'd wondered it a few times now. The first being when he'd decided to search Jack out, earlier that morning.

Cal glanced at Jack; he was looking around like a kid in a candy store, all wide eyed and whistling, his walk an effortless gait.

Did it  _really_  only take a day to fall for Jack Dawson and all of his charm?

Jack turned back to Cal with a smile that was edging into something else.

_Apparently so._

Cal took a short breath that he didn't know he'd been holding.

" _Am_  I mad?" he asked, as Jack reached him.

Jack's hands settled on the wall, either side of Cal. It might have been imposing had anyone else done it, but Jack never looked anything but inviting.

 _Yes, That was it. He_ must _have gone mad._

He thought it, with far more certainty, as he tilted his head and let Jack kiss him again.

Vision dimmed to black for a few moments, and heat crawled up his chest, clawing and invading him in the best possible way.

"... _hah...stop_ ," he protested, albeit weakly, and pulled a wandering hand back. "So amorous, Jack..."

"Afraid I can't help it."

"...how awful for you."

Their heads tipped, very close together, and Jack's breath became softer;

"So," he murmured. "Are you going to take me up on that dance?"

"...what?"

"A  _dance._ "

Jack's hands slid down the wall, as if in explanation. They found the arc of Cal's waist in one simple motion, and then rested there.

"I didn't get one earlier, remember."

Cal scoffed. "I don't dance," he considered it. "Not like you, anyway."

"Ah, so you  _do_  dance."

" _Hardly_. Besides, there's no music."

Jack's smile broadened.

"That the only thing that's stopping you? No problem. I can hum us a tune, then."

And so he did; something sweet and silly that Cal wanted to hate, but only found himself rolling his eyes at.

"You are utterly  _ridiculous_ , Dawson."

Jack looked undaunted, much more amused. "Could be fun. Nobodies watching."

"I don't care about that."

"Heh. So show me, then. A _proper_  dance, though."

"No, Dawson."

" _Please_."

Jack wasn't about to give up, Cal realised.

Evidentially he never did, or else they wouldn't have been standing as they were, together, in that very moment.

Cal took a deep breath, closed his eyes in a few seconds of quiet deliberation.

It hardly mattered; he was so close to Jack that he could almost taste him, and though the sharp effects of alcohol still lingered, Cal was sensible enough to know that it wasn't going to be a valid excuse anymore.

_Not for this._

"A proper dance?" he repeated, and wanted to smile. Perhaps he did.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. If you can."

"...of course I can."

Cal still hesitated though; slowly raised his hands to Jack's waist, lightly touching it with the very tips of his fingers. They seemed to dither too much, and he quietly hated himself for it.

Swallowing back a wave of nerves, he took a step closer, so that the gap between their chests was too tiny, and even Jack's breath seemed to hitch in a moment of surprise.

"So...give me your right hand, Dawson."

Jack did as he was told, and it felt warm and reassuring.

"Like that?"

"Yes, but keep your head held up higher, like that..." Cal hesitated, entirely distracted by Jack's attentive and suddenly very close gaze. He was clinging onto every word, as if Cal knew what he was talking about.

Cal quickly averted his eyes, and cleared his throat.

"Yes, that's good... fine," he moved a step to the side, so that their feet were adjacent to each other. "So now...you do the same."

Jack followed the position, then looked expectantly back at Cal. "Right?"

Cal nodded. "Yes, good..."

He considered the floor, because it was easier.

"What's wrong? I can stick my nose up higher in the air, if that makes me look more gentlemanly..."

"No, no, you look perfect," Cal said, and felt his cheeks heat up with such a quick and casual admission. " _I mean_ ," he cleared his throat again. "...traditionally...a man would lead the dance. That being...the way of a conventional partnership. But this is..."

He trailed off, and realised he couldn't bring himself to finish such a rambled and incoherent sentence. Besides that, he felt too hot, and Jack's laughter was loud and effortless;

"Cal. Are you saying we're not very conventional?"

Cal nodded.

"Highly unorthodox actually, Dawson."

The admittance was not so awful, and he could have imagined himself laughing too.

Jack, as usual, was undeterred, and his arms moved further around Cal's waist, pulling him in so that their bodies touched.

"I don't mind leading," he said. "If you'd like."

Cal attempted a scornful look.

"You think you can do _anything_ , don't you, Dawson?"

"No," Jack shrugged. "But I'll give pretty much anything a try."

He tilted his head, so that his mouth was near to Cal's ear, and he started humming that silly tune again.

It should have been annoying, but Cal found himself closing his eyes, so easily following the sound of Jack's voice.

They might have been dancing, but not really. It was almost stationary; their feet barely moving and steam trails coiling around them, making everything hazier. The distant thrum of engine melded and blended, into Jack's unnamed humming song.

It was melodic, in a strange way.

Cal sighed, arms moving the rest of the way around Jack. The proposition of any kind of dance mostly forgotten.

"Is this how you charmed Rose, too?"

"No," Jack's hand curved up, slowly lining Cal's shoulder blades. He leaned back just a bit, so that their eyes could lock together. "I don't think Rose would have let me lead, for a start. She's unconventional too, you know."

Cal scowled. "I know-"

Then his mouth was crushed, into the rough press of Jack's mouth, smothering away the rest of his words and turning them into a broken moan.

It was unexpected but wanted. Perhaps for the best.

Cal didn't trust himself with words anymore, anyway. They only served to throw him deeper into a hole he didn't think he'd ever get out of, and Jack probably realised it too.

_And it wasn't like anything could ever come of it._

"...this isn't dancing..." Cal murmured anyway, against the kiss.

Jack's smile arced up some more.

"So show me another day."

Then his mouth found Cal's throat, and everything prickled and became so much hotter.

Distantly, as his skin burned and Jack seemed to get his way, Cal imagined a dance that didn't matter if it was unfinished or not, because they could always begin it again tomorrow, or the day after that. Or the day after that.

In another hazy act on impulse, he clung to Jack's shoulders, and sighed.

"...tomorrow, then..."

He thought he could keep imagining it, for as long as it might have been possible.

The iceberg hit a little while after.

88

88

"I expect it isn't anything catastrophic, or we would have heard about it before now," Cal said, as they neared the reception room.

"I guess so," Jack sounded less convinced.

They stood at the elevator door together, waiting for it to descend. A passing crewman pushed a life jacket into Cal's hands.

"Put this on sir, and get yourself on deck as quickly as possible."

Jack raised a brow. "Could be a  _little_  catastrophic, then?"

Cal pretended not to care, as he gauged the groups of people dressed in thick coats and passing along muttered rumours to each other about icebergs, and estimates how long the journey might be delayed.

Reaching the 'normality' of the upper deck was surreal in itself, without the addition of a possible disaster.

Cal still felt sore around his lips, and looking at Jack for too long was like being presented with a risk he couldn't take.

He realised, miserably, that he was becoming rather too fond of Jack Dawson.

"What shall you do?" he asked, hoping he sounded nonchalant about it.

"Hm?" Jack smiled at him. "What would you  _like_  me to do?"

"Be _serious_ , Dawson."

"But I am."

Cal clenched his jaw, pretending not to notice his smirk. "Then...I would like if we could say our goodbyes, and this be the end of it."

"Oh."

Jack's smile became sad. He reached out, fingers delicate on Cal's jawline.

"You'd really like that?"

" _Yes_ ," Cal batted his hand away. "So stop that."

Any other decision would have been akin to suicide. Cal bit his lip so hard that it might have bled. He wouldn't have noticed it, though.

"But what about dancing?" Jack said suddenly.

"...dancing? What about it?"

"Tomorrow. You said we could dance tomorrow."

Cal's chest ached, but he managed to face Jack anyway.

He pushed the life jacket into his hands.

"Never mind the damn dancing, Dawson. There are more pressing matters right now."

Jack blinked down at the life jacket. His brow furrowed pensively, as silence hung between them.

"I'll miss you, Cal."

Cal's smile threatened to collapse.

"Jack-"

At the same time the elevator finally descended, and the door folded open.

Lovejoy and Ruth were standing there, accompanying a couple of uniformed crewmen.

"There he is, the thief," Ruth said, finger pointed at Jack. "Arrest him."

The crewmen flanked Jack in a blurred rush, handcuffs flashing around his back, and suddenly he was an indignant criminal, pulling uselessly against them.

"I haven't stolen anything," he said, and looked at Cal. "I've been with him, all evening."

All eyes flitted to Cal, and Cal was stricken by them.

"That true, Mr. Hockley?" Ruth said, her mouth drawing a line of distaste. "I thought you'd retired to your room because you were feeling out of sorts? Your valet reliably informed me so."

She looked at Lovejoy, who's expression was steadfast in it's neutrality. It was the one thing that Cal could constantly rely on, if nothing else.

Cal cleared his throat. "Yes. That is true."

"Cal-" Jack said.

"But you're with him now," Ruth said, and looked at Jack as though he might be something contagious. "Did you perhaps discover him in your room, Mr. Hockley? I can't see there being any other explanation, really."

Her laugh quaked, and her eyes were watery with insistence. She sounded nervous, almost like she was on the edge of something hysterical, perhaps.

And then Cal understood, as her eyes locked so desperately on his own, she was only trying to convince herself.

Because the only other explanation was simply unacceptable. For both of them.

_Of course it was._

Cal felt himself nodding, a systematic reaction.

"Yes, that's true."

Jack stopped struggling, and stared at Cal.

"What? Cal...what are you talking about? I wasn't...I haven't stolen anything. Tell them."

Cal trained his eyes on one of the crewmen.

It was easier, looking at someone he had no familiarity with. Someone that could help anchor him back to a reality he'd been attempting to run from, and remind him of how he was supposed to act, and why anything else actually was  _so unacceptable_.

_Ah, so that was what he'd been running from._

"He attempted to steal a few things. Fortunately I did discover him in the act, as Mrs. DeWitt just explained."

The words rolled smoothly from his mouth. A well practised tone of authority, and it was like stepping back into old shoes, even if they weren't so comfortable anymore.

And he'd always been a good liar, after all.

" _Cal_ ," Jack said, in a broken voice.

Cal could have flinched at the sound, like someone cutting a knife across his chest.

He didn't though, and smiled pleasantly at Ruth.

"I'll join yourself and Rose on deck in a moment. Then we might see what all the fuss is about, shall we?"

Ruth's voice cracked into something like relief.

"Of course, Mr. Hockley," she caught his arm. "I presume you're feeling much better now."

"Much better. And the fresh air might do some good too, actually."

88

88

Rose was the first person he saw outside.

She was stood near enough to the launching lifeboats, but a deliberate distance away from the other women. Her expression was far colder than the frozen night air, which slapped across Cal's face, sobering his senses instantaneously.

It didn't do any sort of good, though.

He moved quickly through the commotion of the crowd, to reach her.

"Rose-"

"Where is he? Where is Jack?"

Cal blinked at her. Another imagined slap.

"...he has...been arrested."

"I see," Rose said.

She seemed calm at a glance, but it was betrayed by the glitter in her eyes. She didn't look upset, though. She looked  _angry_.

"Your mother made the accusations," Cal said weakly, as if it would have made any difference.

Rose nodded. "My mother's word is quite difficult to argue, I grant you that. Although I'm sure you did very little to contend it."

" _Rose_ -"

"The ship is sinking," she interrupted him very bluntly, and then looked out at the vast blackness of ocean. "I didn't know if you were aware."

"I heard there was some trouble."

"Yes."

Then she turned back to him again.

It was as if she might be surveying him properly for the first time since their lives had begun together.

"Mother has already found us a boat. She is efficient like that, when it comes to matters of self-preservation. Have you ever noticed?"

Cal nodded slowly, though it felt like the wrong answer, somehow. "I have."

Rose's mouth twitched the faintest smile.

"Most of the people on board this ship are going to die, Cal. The third class, I mean. Does that please you very much?"

Cal frowned at her. "Do you think me so heartless?"

"I know it," Rose said, not missing a beat.

The words stung, but someone jarred Cal's elbow, and he remembered where they were and what was happening, very distantly.

The crowd was getting larger and more chaotic, and screams and gunshots fired somewhere on the other side of the ship.

Rose started to walk past him, back toward the inner quarters.

"Where are you going?" Cal blocked her, with an impulsive indignation.

"To find Jack, obviously."

"Don't be ridiculous. You can't-"

Rose shrugged his hands violently off her shoulders.

"Are you going to try and stop me?" the defiance in her tone was dangerous. "Threaten me again? So that everyone else can see exactly how entitled and arrogant and selfish you truly are? Please, do go  _on_."

Cal opened his mouth, but words would not come.

Instead they stared between each other, in something that should have been a tense and childish stand off.

It was, but Rose's eyes were searching him, like she was grasping for something else too.

"Jack wanted to _see_  you," she said, more quietly. "He wanted to see if he could make amends with you. He's a good person, Cal. Can't you see it?"

Cal curled his hands into tight but ornamental fists, breath shaking in his chest.

A flood of emotion returned to him; the harsh, insistent press of skin, warm hums of breath and bright blue shade of eyes, and  _yes_ ,  _of course_  Jack was a good person, and Cal suddenly felt like he might need to sit down.

He'd never been so brutally bothered by conscience before.

"You hardly know him at all," he muttered, at last.

Rose's stare didn't relent.

"You're missing a couple of buttons," she said, listlessly, "On your shirt."

Then she started to push past him again.

"Wait-" Cal grasped her arm.

" _Let go_."

Cal did, but was undeterred.

"If I contend Jack's arrest, will you please just get on a lifeboat?"

Rose looked at him as though he'd told a terrible joke. "How can I know you'll do that?"

"I suppose you can't. My word will have to do."

Rose looked incredulous. She shook her head. "That isn't enough."

Cal smiled vaguely.

"I suspected it wouldn't be," then he turned rapidly around on his heel.

" _Cal_ , what are you doing?"

Cal considered the question only shortly, because he had no use for anything very sensible anymore, apparently.

"I suppose...putting a little of my entitled, arrogant, selfishness to some sort of use."

He didn't wait for her response, and shoved through the ever-surmounting crowd with a merciless and angry force.

8

He found Lovejoy waiting on the other side of the ship, and didn't waste another moment, in case sensibilities found him again.

"Lovejoy, where is Dawson being held?"

Lovejoy turned to him, with the mildest flash of confusion. "Sir, I've found a boat which is taking men aboard..."

Cal looked past his shoulder, and for a few seconds his mind was dowsed in the reality of the situation again.

Men clamouring and cursing around each other, all in desperate acts to hold onto their own lives. Another gunshot, and Cal's stomach tossed, reminding him that he might have lost his mind, after all.

"Sir?" Lovejoy repeated.

Cal took a short breath.

" _Dawson_ ," he said, and grasped Lovejoy's arm tightly. "Tell me where he is. That is an  _order,_ by the way."

Lovejoy still hesitated, as he pulled a silver key out of his pocket.

"I believe he was taken down to the officers quarters, sir. Still handcuffed."

Cal snatched the key and turned to leave.

"Sir," Lovejoy said. "...if you don't mind my asking, what exactly is this in aid of?"

Cal paused, in a fresh flood of apprehension for a few unbearable seconds. He turned his head, to look at Lovejoy.

"My damn fiancée, of course."

It was true, but only in the smallest and most fragmented part.

 

 


	5. Imperfect

He usually won, so it never crossed his mind that he might not.

Perhaps it was that which ultimately made it easier to ignore everything else; the water that was already seeping onto the ship's listing decking, and the cries and sobs that intermittently disturbed his deft march through the crowd.

_You won't lose anything, I promise._

Cal's march turned into a run.

He reached the entrance hall, where crew staff were still handing out life jackets to anyone who'd take one, or trying to calm those who were asking the obvious questions.

_Where they really sinking? What were they to do? Might they perish...?_

Cal had hardly considered it himself. He thought that if he did, he might change his mind.

Mr. Andrews, who Cal only knew as a possible ally to Rose's rebellion, was also there.

"Mr. Hockley," Andrews said, and dropped a life jacket into his hands. "Please, I urge you to rejoin the others on deck."

Cal dismissed the words with an impatient wave of his hand.

"I need directions to the crew quarters at once."

Andrews shook his head. "That area...it will be submerged by now. I wouldn't try your luck there."

"It's a matter of urgency."

Andrews smiled empathetically at him, and then turned to offer a woman another life jacket.

"Surely any valuables might be replaced, Mr. Hockley? Rather that than your own life."

"You misunderstand me," Cal grabbed his arm, pulling him forcefully back round to face him. "I'm not asking for your assistance, Mr. Andrews. I'm  _telling_  you."

Andrews' expression dropped, into the sort of coolness that Cal had seen all too often on Rose's face. Or anyone else's that might dare to cross him for that matter. He was used to it, and he didn't much care what anyone thought of it in that moment.

"Tell me  _quickly_ , Mr. Andrews."

"...very well."

The instructions were concentrated and clear enough, and Cal murmured the curtest of thank yous before rushing into the reception area, where the elevators were still in questionable service.

An attendant approached, but Cal was used to dealing with small bothers, and he pushed the young man aside, stepping into the elevator before any other sort of warning could reach his ears.

The elevator began to descend, and with it the water began streaming in. By the time he'd reached the appropriate level it was up to his knees, and the corridor ahead was a long and narrow pool.

Cal looked over his shoulder, where the elevator was slowly rising back up again.

He wasn't brave, he could admit it to himself, at least.

But he could be determined if need be. Even if it was only to save pride or reputation, or anything else so useless and intangible.

Besides, Rose would have laughed in his face, disappointed in him as usual.

He wiped the wetness from his forehead, and took a small step forwards. The water lapped up his leg, far too cold, like ice clamping his joints.

He took another step anyway, and the lights flickered and then went out, blanketing everything in darkness. It must have only been a few seconds, though it seemed much longer.

Cal froze, breath halting with it.

With nothing but the dark to distract him, a myriad of images flashed into his mind, urging him to take notice of his better instinct.

An inner circle of fellow and precious socialites, gossiping and staring at him. All the judgemental baggage that came with high society living.

It wasn't for Cal to decide what anyone thought of him, though he knew that his reputation had always teetered on disapproval, no matter how well he played the game. The Hockley fathers had always been hard to please.

And then there was  _Ruth_ , standing in front of himself and Jack, understanding and knowing everything.

She wasn't a fool, and it should have been damning enough. Enough reason to turn back, certainly.

And it wasn't too late.

Cal pressed his back to the wall, scrunching his hands into fists of tension.

Rose's disappointment might have been a blow, but he could probably endure it. And her name wasn't anything to cling a reputation to. She'd never liked him, anyway.

He closed his eyes, lingering in a moment of what he thought was absolution.

But Jack's face returned to him, much more easily.

Every small detail of him was there; the shape of his lips to the subtle arc of his brows. It was like finding a lost photograph.

_You won't lose anything, I promise._

And he could swallow his pride for once, too.

Cal opened his eyes, and bright light was bathing the corridor once again.

He took a braced breath, and the water was almost more tolerable, or perhaps he was just getting used to it.

"God dammit, Dawson..."

He stepped down into the corridor. No need to swallow his pride when it was entirely forgotten.

8

The water had reached to his stomach before he'd begun to slow down; a strident walk turning into one of those awful dreams, in which running was a losing battle through quicksand.

It was so cold, though.

" _Dawson!_ " he yelled, voice carrying down the flickering corridor.

The ship bounced his voice back at him, and ominous creaks followed it.

And then Jack's voice;

"...Cal? I'm here, Cal!"

He sounded so shocked, and Cal was stunned by his own relief.

His ice-seized joints snapped into gear, and he ran the rest of the way to the cabin door.

He gave it a hard push, but it was unyielding.

"Jack," he said, and leaned heavily against it, attempting to catch his breath. "...I'm here."

A pointless acknowledgement, perhaps.

"I'm glad," Jack sounded like he might be smiling.

"I'm not."

Jack laughed, and Cal's chest quivered with the sound of it. He took another breath, and then reeled back a bit, before forcing his shoulder at the door again.

Water poured out the room as he tumbled into it, almost falling into a table.

" _Cal!_ "

Jack was perched on the edge of the table, compromised by his hands, which were handcuffed to some piping. His face was alight, and he looked as fearless as Cal remembered and had come to expect him to be.

It made everything appear less dire, and Cal waded the rest of the way to meet him.

"...can't believe you're here," Jack said.

"I-I have the key..." Cal frantically pulled out his pockets. "It's here...I have it..."

"...I didn't think anyone would come..."

" _Dammit_!"

Cal took off his jacket with a sound of frustration.

The key was not there.

"Cal?"

"I  _had_  it!"

But he didn't.

He must have dropped it.

Temporarily, it was the worst possible thing that could ever have happened.

Cal dragged a hand through his hair, muttering a string of curses. He might've frozen to death before admitting to such a _stupid_  mistake...

" _Goddamn it!_ " he slammed his hands on the table top.

" _Cal._ "

Cal blinked up at once. Jack  _still_  had the ability to grab him, even without having use of his hands, apparently.

"I lost it," Cal said, bleakly.

Jack's smile didn't waver.

"Why did you come back?" he asked. As if, ludicrously, it were the most urgent question.

Cal shook his head in confusion.

"What...what does that even matter, Dawson?"

"I dunno," Jack glanced out the porthole window, which was levelling with water. "I just wondered."

Cal sneered, at nothing in particular.

"...I...I came back because of Rose, of course," he fumbled around again, quite uselessly, in his empty suit pocket. "She wouldn't leave the damn ship without you," he heard himself laugh, despite everything. " _Ridiculous_..."

"Oh," Jack said.

He sounded unusually hollow, and Cal couldn't help but look at him again.

"We are...she _is_  my fiancée, Dawson."

Like it might be something that either of them were going to forget. Or maybe Cal needed to remind  _himself_.

How absurd.

"I understand," Jack said, as if he didn't understand at all. "...I just can't believe you came back, that's all."

Cal attempted a sarcastic smile, but his throat felt too tight.

"Well. I must be mad then, mustn't I?"

Jack's mouth arced up some more. "Thank you, Cal."

They sat in the shortest and most torturous of silences, broken only by the occasional groan of the ship. For a few moments it was mere background noise and nothing else.

Then Cal rubbed an arm roughly over his eyes. He sighed, and imagined walking away.

"I'll find it," he said instead.

"...what?"

"The  _damn key_. I must have dropped it somewhere along the corridor, that's all."

He walked through the water, eyes narrowing on the surface of it.

It was a little murky, but not too difficult to see to the bottom. It would be easy enough to spot the key if it was lying there.

"I won't be long, Dawson."

"Wait-"

Cal batted away his words, and pushed out, into the corridor.

The lights had noticeably dimmed, but he tried not to think about that. He strode through the water, ignoring how it lapped too close to his chest.

"Cal-"

Jack's voice turned into muffled ambience, as Cal took a deep breath, and dipped down, under the water.

It really was murky, and he almost missed it.

Between contending the cold that stabbed tiny knives all over his body, and trying to gather his sense of direction, the glint of silver shone along the strip of the corridor.

It wasn't very far away, and Cal surged to it with a short burst of relief. He scrambled to pick it up, and when he surfaced he realised the ceiling was much closer than it had looked before.

Jack was still sat on top of the table in the cabin quarters, though.

"You  _are_  mad," Jack confirmed, as Cal clambered back, and onto the table.

"Lucky," Cal corrected.

"Hah. I thought you didn't believe in that sort of thing."

"Perhaps you're rubbing off on me."

His hands were annoyingly unsteady, fingers trembling, as he pushed the key into the cuff lock.

Jack's arms swung free, immediately curling around Cal's back, and finding him in a rough and unforgiving embrace.

" _Jesus, Cal_...you're  _freezing_."

"Enough of that," Cal said.

But the contact was a startling relief, and Jack's heart was a hammer, crushing into his own.

Cal pushed it away.

"We need to get the hell out of here."

8

As the adrenaline passed and they began stumbling up flooded stairways, Cal realised he wasn't particularly well equipped to deal with disaster, and that he might actually have made an insane life decision.

"We're going to die," he realised, as the lights flashed and went out for another excruciating few seconds.

When they came back on, Jack's hand was on his arm. "No, we're _not_."

Most people would have panicked; maybe yelled and swore a lot. Or maybe even have given up. All the things that Cal had been doing and then trying not to do. Most people were normal like that.

But then there was _Jack_ , and he was obviously not Most People. He was probably perfect.

"Come on, not much further," he kept saying, like an optimistic mantra that Cal was supposed to believe in.

It was funny how he  _did_ want to believe it, though. That insane decision, again.

The ship made some more dramatic sounds, like an animal in the last throws of a drawn-out death, then the lights momentarily became a bit brighter, revealing a closed door in front of them. It was straining dangerously with the influx of water behind it.

Cal started towards it, anyway.

" _Not that way_ ," Jack said, holding him back.

"But that's the way out."

"Then we'll have to find another way."

"There _is_ no other way!"

Jack was not fazed.  _No surprise_. "Then we find one."

Cal stared at him.

It was infuriating to look at; Jack splashing through water as if they might be kids in a recreational pool, the calm aura of his face a contrast to Cal's own terror. Designed just to wind him up some more, perhaps.

Still he followed Jack back the other way, hand reaching for, but never quite touching Jack's own.

"...I didn't mean what I said," he heard himself say, in an indignant voice.

"What?" Jack sounded distracted.

It was understandable, considering the circumstances.

"What I said before," Cal cleared his throat. He wondered why he was still talking, or thinking about irrelevant things that shouldn't matter anymore.

But he carried on, regardless;

"I-I didn't mean to call you filth. I didn't mean that," he took an uneven breath. "Just so that you're aware, Dawson."

Jack stopped shortly, and then turned slowly around. His face softened into something like amusement, and he placed a hand on Cal's.

"We're not gonna die yet, you know. Save stuff like that for when things get  _really_  bad."

Cal glared at the water. "I just wanted you to know."

"I already knew."

Cal blinked. "I thought-"

In the same breath, the doors gave way, and a rush of water exploded towards them.

It would have been terrifying, if not for how quickly it all happened; no time to react, as they were both swept along the corridor and crashing into another stair gate. It shuddered with their weights, but didn't buckle.

"Are you alright?" Jack said at once.

Cal groaned, rubbing the side of an aching rib.

"Can we call things ' _really_  bad', now?"

"They don't seem to be getting better," Jack smiled grimly.

"We should have gone the other way."

"We would have drowned."

Cal cursed and prised himself away from the gate bars; the water was still flushing rapidly through it, and though it was only at their knees, it was getting higher by the second.

Lights went out again, as the ship made another terrible wailing sound.

"Well. Now we get to drown anyway, Dawson. Just slightly more _slowly,_  and with more time to regret everything. I hope you realise-"

Jack pressed a finger to his mouth. "Ssh. I think I got an idea."

" _Fantastic_."

Cal slouched back to the wall, trying to inject a bit of feeling into his seized up limbs. He watched, in some despair, as Jack ran back down the stairway, and then made a victorious sound.

"Here. Come help me!"

Cal peered down, to see Jack standing next to a wooden bench that was pressed up against the wall.

"What now, Dawson? Sit down and accept our fate?"

"It's  _loose_. Help me pull it off the wall."

"Oh..."

Reluctantly, Cal stepped down. He got a hold on the other end of the bench.

It took a few intrepid attempts, but eventually it peeled back from the wall, and Cal allowed Jack another inappropriate moment of cheer.

"See, we did it."

" _Wonderful_ _._  So now what?"

"Now we need to ram it, against the door."

"...that's your idea?"

"I never said it was a very _good_ idea. If you have any better ones, please, be my guest."

Cal hesitated. He could feel the water creeping up and past his knees. There wasn't much time left.

He hoisted his end of the bench back up with a grumbled curse.

" _Fine_. But if we die, I shall kill you, Dawson."

"That's fair enough."

They drove the bench with a desperate edge into the gate, and it buckled just enough, warping metal bars so that they curled and bent apart. It gave room to a small gap along the side. It would be a real squeeze, but it was manageable.

Cal dropped the bench, and almost fell into the gate as the water suddenly began gushing at great speed through it.

"We have to move,  _now,_ " Jack said, and pressed his hands to Cal's back, nudging him forwards some more. "Ladies first."

Cal scowled, but didn't decline.

He scraped through the narrowing gap, suit tearing at the gate, but hardly stopping him. The water helped push him along, and he heard a fierce 'clanking' sound as he slipped through to the other side.

There was light shining up the stairway, and he stumbled up the steps, at once gathering the slightly surreal sight of upset tables, chairs and drifting plates.

The clear night sky was visible through a nearby window, and he could see the tiny sharp dots of stars in the distance. A small advertisement for freedom, or whatever fate had in mind for him. At least it wouldn't be this...

"Dawson..."

He turned expectantly back around, to see water still rushing through the warped and almost entirely covered gate. Then Cal realised that it was shut again, and there was no sign of Jack at all.

" _Dawson!_ "

Jack suddenly bobbed up, gasping on the other side of the doorway.

He flicked hair out his face, and shook his head at Cal.

"It's no use. It's stuck...I can't get through it."

It was insulting; how resigned he looked. Or even  _defeated_.

That wasn't what Jack Dawson was supposed to be, and it _wasn't fair._

And Cal wasn't prepared for how furious it made him.

He ran back down the stairs, and rattled the gate rather uselessly.

"What do you mean, Dawson? Of course you can get through, you idiot!"

Jack smiled at him, because he must've been insane.

"So charming, Cal," and he pushed back a bit, putting a marked distance between himself and the shattered gate. And Cal. "You came back for me. That's enough."

Cal shook his head furiously.

"No. No it's  _not,_ " he reached through the bars, grasping at Jack's sleeve and pulling him in. "I-I can't let this happen."

"It's okay. Rose will understand. She'll know you came back."

"What-"

Then Jack slipped the handcuffs the rest of the way off his wrist. He passed them through the bars, to Cal.

"Show her them. She'll know you tried."

Cal stared at the cuffs, trying to process Jack's words with a telling confusion.

The water was still roaring around them, lashing through the gate at such speed that it was hard to stay very steady, though Cal barely registered it anyway.

He blinked at Jack, and shook his head in irritation.

"...no, she won't," he said, more to himself. "Rose won't believe me."

He dropped the handcuffs, and curled his fists properly around the gate.

It'd been indented by the fast flow of the water, but there was a small and clear advantage from where he stood. With a little leverage and push in the right direction, it might come loose just long enough...

Cal's knuckles whitened and his eyes locked on Jack's.

"This...it isn't about Rose anyway, Dawson."

It wasn't even a revelation, because he'd known it for a little while now.

_Of course he had._

"Cal-"

Cal didn't need to think, as he shoved at the gate's weakest point with all the strength he had left. It juddered, then gave way momentarily to a fresh wave of water. There was no time to brace against it.

As Jack slipped through, Cal slammed back into the wall, and something painful bloomed at the back of his head. A white mist overtook his vision for some agonised seconds, before he remembered where he was and what was happening. And Jack's voice.

Dazedly, he followed the sound, body recovered enough to navigate the stairway.

He staggered up it, recognising the swirling and sodden patterns of the first class dining room carpet with a detached sort of elation.

"... _stupid_ , Cal..."

Jack's voice sounded broken, and it didn't suit him. Or so Cal thought, as his legs began to feel too weak, and then seemed to buckle beneath him.

That didn't matter, since arms were soon around him, knocking him backwards and onto the nearby table.

" _Stupid_ ," Jack repeated, and kissed him hard and messily on the mouth. Again, and then again.

Cal might have laughed, but he felt strange, and there was something sticky and warm about the back of his head.

"You're bleeding," Jack said.

"I'm alright..." Cal tried to get up, but it was very tiresome for some reason.

Then he felt an arm, looping tighter around him.

"We have to move. Come on, Cal.  _Please_..."

Cal opened his eyes (that was odd, he couldn't remember having closed them) and saw Jack's face.

He looked stricken with actual anguish, almost as if he didn't know what to do for once.

Cal wanted to sneer at it. So Jack wasn't always so perfect, then.

He blinked, and the constant tilt of the flooding dining room seemed to reflect his own dizzied mind.

Then he realised that Jack was holding him much closer, and there were nonsensical but soothing words in his ears. It was fitting, though. Nonsensical seemed to have become the theme of the day.

Cal wondered, distantly, how a day could change so many things.

_You won't lose anything, I promise._

It seemed like he was going to lose this one, though.

"...I'm sorry," he said, and smiled.

As darkness crept up on him, and a mouth pressed delicately to his own, he thought perhaps that winning was overrated anyway.

 

 


	6. Improbable

It had probably all been a dream.

Cal was quite certain of it, as his mind reluctantly dragged itself back into consciousness.

"...I didn't realise..."

"...what are we going to do?"

The voices were hushed but very familiar, as if they expected anything too loud might break something fragile. There were other noises too, but they weren't nearly so important.

Cal opened his eyes.

He must still have been dreaming, because Rose was looking at him with softer eyes. Like she could actually stand him.

"He's waking," she said. Relieved.

Yes, he was  _definitely_  dreaming.

It was disorienting either way, and he rubbed an aching head and thought he might be sick. Pushing an unknown hand away from his chest, he turned onto his side and coughed up the horrible sting of seawater.

"Better?" said Jack's voice.

Cal looked round, too confused to be very humiliated.

Jack was crouched next to him, anxiety flashing in his eyes. Both his hands curled tightly around Cal's, like he might never let go again.

_Surely it was a dream, then._

"Cal?" Jack spoke again, more concern edging his voice. "Are you alright?"

Cal coughed up some more water.

"...I feel rotten."

Jack laughed, though it was uneven.

"Well. I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but the ship is still sinking, and we're still on it," then he let go of Cal's hands rather too quickly, and gestured to Rose. "Rose found us. She's safe."

"Oh," Cal struggled upright. He rubbed his head again and flinched, remembering everything else. "I was hoping perhaps it was all just an awful dream..."

"Unfortunately not," said Rose.

She was still looking at him in that unnatural way, like she might be seeing him for the very first time. Or something odd like that.

Even odder, her hand moved carefully around his back, and then she and Jack were helping him up, back onto his feet.

Combating another nauseous wave, the reality of the situation returned to him rapidly. Water was pouring through the dining room, and there were the echoed shouts and cries of people from somewhere above them.

"Quick, up the stairs," Jack said, gesturing to the grand staircase.

It was already flooding water, and the trek up it was laborious at best.

Jack led the way (of course he would) and Rose hung at Cal's side. Her hand never quite on his arm, but alarmingly close.

"Rose-" Cal started.

"Not now, Cal," she said, keeping her gaze ahead. "Please."

"...alright."

He didn't know what he would have said to her, anyway. Nothing would have been appropriate. It was obvious, why she hadn't got on a lifeboat yet, and why she was here.

Cal didn't need to hear her say aloud that she loved Jack.

The very idea of it made his chest tighten and his throat close up, but only because it was more complicated now.

And Cal didn't think he'd mind Rose falling for anyone else.

Another wave of dizziness assaulted him, and he halted and clung to the banister to recover himself for a moment.

"Does it hurt?" Rose asked.

She stopped near to him, her stare not cold, but entirely neutral.

Cal smiled vaguely.

"Yes. If it makes you happy, it does."

It was petty, but it granted him a small scrap of satisfaction, just seeing her expression twist into  _anything else,_ besides nothing at all.

She looked upset though, and it wasn't so satisfying as he'd expected it to be.

"I don't want to see you hurt, Cal," she said. "Despite what you might think."

Cal took another step, and the dizziness began to subside.

"I feel the same," he said, and noticed her wavering hand.

She opted not to touch his arm though.

"Perhaps we should have talked more," she said instead.

It was only a moment's pause between them, but Cal wondered if Rose was almost regretful. It might have been wishful thinking though. She'd turned away before he could properly tell.

"Come on," Jack called. "We've got to move quickly now."

At the top of the staircase was a bizarre mix between the reigns of chaos and calm.

Some gentlemen were seated with their brandy in the most dignified of conversation, whilst others were running out onto the decking, calling for help.

Cal swallowed hard, and then felt the hand, tightly grasping his wrist. He looked down, recognising it as Jack's.

"We need to get Rose to a lifeboat, Cal."

Cal nodded automatically.

"Yes. Of course."

8

8

On the deck the crowd were becoming riotous, and officers orders were mostly in vain, drowned out by the mounting panic.

Cal and Jack flanked Rose, escorting her through the mania as smoothly as was possible.

"I won't leave without you, Jack," Rose said.

They reached one of the last barely organised groups, where people were still being ordered forward by the rule of women and children first.

"Don't make this difficult, Rose," Jack said. "You have to get on a lifeboat. _Now_."

The gap closed between the two of them, as he set his hands on her shoulders.

Cal looked out to the sea.

The near-distant display of released lifeboats and all their presumably safe passengers was a small comfort, and a kind of deja-vu. Maybe that was what made it comforting. Then Cal realised that anything was more preferable to looking at Jack and Rose in that moment.

"Rose, get on the lifeboat," Jack said again.

"No, I can't just leave you here to die."

" _He won't_ ," Cal said, far more sharply than he'd intended. "He won't die, I promise."

Both Jack and Rose turned and stared at him, and Cal cleared his throat, pretending their surprise didn't matter to him.

"Jack and myself will find another boat, Rose. I can have it arranged."

"How can you do that?" Rose demanded.

Cal smiled weakly.

"How else do you think? Money talks, my dear."

Rose scowled.

"How noble. Can you solve nothing at all without your money, Cal?"

"I didn't know you'd be so critical of my methods of protection," Cal's smile became brittle. "Considering the circumstances."

Jack clutched his shoulder. "Rose is scared, that's all."

" _I'm not scared, Jack_. Why can't either of you two just _listen_  to me?"

Jack wiped a hand through his hair, and made a sound of exasperation. Cal turned away from the both of them.

He wasn't so angry as he supposed he should be.

If Rose wanted to defy him now, he had no reason to object to it. Maybe if would even have been disappointing if she'd been compliant about it. Her obvious dislike for him had always been reliable, if nothing else.

It was about the only thing that had remained an absolute constant in whatever constituted for their 'relationship'.

_But of course._

The idea rocked him abruptly, like a bolt to his chest.

He gripped Rose's arm.

"Rose-"

"Cal, I don't want your-"

"I have a proposition," he interrupted.

He had to speak quickly, in case he lost his nerve.

"If you board the lifeboat now, we need not marry. And you need never see me again."

Rose stared at him.

"...what?"

There was a small instance of conflict on her face, and it was interesting because Cal had never known her to consider anything he said with much weight before. Now she was looking at him as though he might be an animal, undecided if he was dangerous or not.

"What if I don't get on the lifeboat?"

"Then I'm afraid we must be married. Assuming we don't perish first," Cal smiled. "I'm sure I can imagine which option is the most appealing to you, Rose."

It could have been amusing, and not madness, in any other situation. If he could work  _anything_  at all to his advantage, perhaps it would be her actual loathing for him. And it was easy to put on an air of confidence when it came to matters of business. Treating this as one; a mere business transaction, might have made it seem like his life wasn't actually falling into shambles. He could kid himself.

Besides that, he could feel Jack's eyes, burning intently on him.

"Cal..." Jack said. "We should tell-"

"This is  _preposterous_ ," someone else said, from behind them.

They all whirled around, to see Ruth.

She was staring between them all with an ashen and horrified face.

"Have you gone completely mad, Cal? Or are you drunk?" her laugh was full of nerves, and then she looked at Rose with urgency.  _"Is_ he?"

"I'm sure I don't know,"

"Well, the entire thing is ridiculous," Ruth ushered Rose toward her. "There is a lifeboat waiting for us at this very moment, Rose. And you shall get on it, and we'll hear no more of this nonsense. Shall we, Mr. Hockley?"

She looked at Cal and then at Jack, with the unspoken impression of what she already knew. Her face scrunched up into unsubtle disgust.

Cal just smirked at her, and turned back to Rose.

"What do you say, Rose? Will you take up my offer?"

Rose seemed to hesitate, though.

"I need to know that Jack is safe. And this doesn't assure that."

Cal was not dissuaded. He had one more thing, almost literally up his sleeve.

He dug deep into his pocket, fingers curling round the heavy weight of the diamond with a detached sense of relief.

He pulled it quickly out, and offered it to Rose.

"You and your mother might consider this an extra incentive, if you like. And I'm sure a great relief from your family name's ruin."

Ruth's eyes became large, a pink blush creeping on her cheeks.

"Mr. Hockley, how can you suggest-"

" _Shut up, mother_ ," Rose said. She wasn't shouting, but it was defiant enough.

Her eyes were trained on Cal, glittering that sort of interest that he couldn't get used to. As if she suddenly had a thousand questions, and it was a damn shame, considering how many wasted hours they'd spent in pained silence together.

"I can't, Cal," she said, slowly. "Even if you...if you keep to your word, and I don't marry you, it means nothing."

Then her gaze turned to Jack, and Cal gritted his teeth, knowing that actually, nothing else mattered to her.

He realised he had no more cards to play but the truth of it...

The crowd around them was transforming into a terrible commotion that made it difficult to stay in one place. Patience had devolved into pushes and shoves and tears, and time wasn't going to wait for them anymore.

Jack suddenly cut between Rose and Ruth, like he might do something noble and try to resolve the situation.

Ruth turned on him though, grabbing his shirt and shaking him violently backwards into the crowd.

"All of this is _your fault! You've ruined everything..._ "

Jack did not resist or argue, because he was decent like that, but Cal could feel his own hands twitching in anger, and he could never be so decent as Jack, even if he tried.

He struck through the crowd to bring Ruth back, and she rounded on him, her iced eyes becoming fire, and her hands scratching for the diamond.

"Give it to me, then! If Rose won't take a fool's offer, then I shall..."

She wrenched the diamond out of Cal's hand, before Jack was pulling her away again, and then they were both swallowed up by the crowd.

Cal felt Rose at his side, her hand clinging to his arm, perhaps to keep her own balance, as bodies jostled them together and voices became angrier all around them. Cal hardly had time to acknowledge it all, before a gunshot rang out, puncturing the air like an audible dagger.

There was a scream, and distantly he recognised it as Rose.

The crowd parted with murmured sounds.

Jack fell to the ground.

8

8

The air around them stilled momentarily into silence. Cal didn't really notice it, though.

He knelt down to Jack with his heart in his mouth. He was almost too afraid to speak because of it.

"...Jack?"

If he was dead, it might have made things simpler. But Cal wasn't sure he'd be able to cope with that. He couldn't even consider it.

Then Jack opened his eyes.

Cal's heart began to slow again, and he remembered to breathe again too.

"...are you alright?" he said, unable to keep the shake out of his voice. "I thought...I thought you were..."

Jack sat up. He looked faintly disoriented, more bewildered.

"Yeah..." he glanced down, where a small patch of red was slowly blooming on the arm of his shirt. "...what about the diamond? Ruth was-"

Cal looked at the wound in alarm.

"Jack..."

His hands trembled, hovering for the sleeve but never touching it. He didn't know what else to do.

Jack started to laugh at him, and winced a bit.

"Cal. I'm alright. I  _promise_ ," he slowly rolled his sleeve up. "Looks way worse than it is."

The wound looked nasty, but it didn't look deep. It seemed like it'd just grazed past him. Jack was a lucky bastard.

If not for the shake in his voice, Cal would have told him so.

"I...I  _know_ ," he said instead.

An attempted air of carelessness must have failed quite badly, because Jack's laughter subsided, falling into a soft smile. And then his hand was even softer on Cal's arm.

"Hey, I told you. I'm _fine_."

Cal nodded again.

"I know,  _I know_..."

Around them, quiet had reverted back to panic, and Jack and Cal were all but forgotten on the ground, just surrounded by the blur of people.

It wouldn't have mattered if anyone was watching them, anyway.

"Cal, what about the dia-"

Cal reeled forwards, and wrapped his arms the rest of the way around Jack. The simplicity of the action, and then how it  _felt,_  was such a stunning relief that he might have sobbed.

How embarrassing it should have been.

"Hey..." Jack trailed off.

Then his arms reached round too, completing the embrace.

It was almost too much, but Cal didn't care for once. He didn't care about the press against his ribs, or the way Jack's hand curved on his head and made it sting, or the way the crowd parted. And Rose and Ruth were just standing there, watching them like statues.

_Rose was watching them._

Her features were highlighted by the sudden explosion of flares, lighting up the sky. But she didn't look cold or furious or stunned or anything else that Cal might have expected. Not like Ruth, and the distraught sweep of her body, as she walked away from all of them.

Cal and Jack stood up together, and Cal tilted his head away from them.

"Rose..." said Jack.

" _Don't_ ," she raised a hand.

Though the decking was an orchestra of noise, the quiet between the three of them became almost tangible, and Cal's breath hung in his mouth.

Some tortured moment, in which time seemed to have caught up with him and reminded him of small annoyances; like consequences, and the idea that he might have done the very thing he'd resented Rose for.

To fall for somebody, so _quickly_  and so  _hard,_  and without any sensible reason at all.

He should have known better, and it was a pity that Jack was so charming.

"I wish you had just told me," Rose said, into their silence.

Cal blinked, shocked by the blunt admission of her words. She didn't stumble over them, she could have been talking about anything at all.

Then her mouth turned up. The shine that touched her eyes was upsetting, though.

"I see Jack is important to both of us then, Cal."

"I-I didn't plan for this..."

As if he could reasonably justify  _any of it_. He wanted to laugh at his own desperation, even as he spoke. Pathetic.

Rose laughed instead, saving him the job.

"Oh, you never 'plan' for these things, Cal. They just happen," she paused, and her face became wry when she looked at Jack again. "Obviously."

Jack was earnest as usual, like he might have been taking the burden of both Cal and Rose's distress all at once. He was selfless even when he was the subject of accusation, and it was fitting. Rose probably knew as well as Cal; it wasn't Jack's fault, he'd just helped speed up the inevitable.

"I'm sorry," said Jack, heartfelt in a way that could never have found Cal's voice.

Rose didn't seem to mind.

"I can see mother will be perfectly miserable about it."

"Rose-"

"But that is quite usual for her."

Then her smile raised up some more, like it might genuinely have pleased her to think about it.

She looked at Cal again, and her laugh was soft but not embittered.

"At least now I know that you'll try to keep Jack safe."

She was so matter of fact about it. And despite every ingrained practise, every lesson of decorum that had been drilled into him, and so taught him not to appreciate a woman so brazen, in this instant Cal realised how valuable it really was.

8

She walked to the lifeboats with only one backward glance, and Cal knew that it was for Jack alone.

Cal couldn't regret the loss of her. She had never been his to begin with, and they both knew it. Perhaps that was what made it less painful; it was some sort of escape for the both of them.

It was hard to get to grips with, though. Cal hardly knew that he'd needed any sort of escape in the first place.

Then he felt fingers brushing his own, and he remembered.

Jack smiled carefully at him.

"Are you alright?"

"Am _I_  alright?" Cal scoffed. "I'm not the one who got shot at."

"You know what I mean."

"Not particularly," Cal considered. "Alright, I mean."

"Me neither," Jack was still smiling, though.

Cal sighed heavily, massaging the back of his tendered head with a groan.

"Well. At least now she's'  _free of a marriage she doesn't want_ ', in your own brutal words, Dawson."

Jack turned properly to face him.

"Aren't you free, too?"

Another flare of fireworks lit up his face in that moment, accentuating all of the little things that Cal had already memorised about him. He needn't have even looked at him to know them. How easy it was.

Cal felt himself smile, albeit weakly.

"I don't know what I am anymore, Dawson. I do know that it's all your fault, though."

Jack's fingers were light, curving slowly around Cal's.

"Must be that bump on your head. It's done something to you."

"That's your fault too, Dawson, by the way."

"Heh. I am sorry."

They both watched, as Rose's lifeboat lowered down into the waters. She didn't look at either of them, gaze steadfastly ahead, on the stretch of black ocean. As if she was imagining another place entirely.

Cal could understand it.

"It was the right thing to do," Jack said. "You couldn't have lied to her, it isn't fair."

Cal looked at him. Ideally, he wouldn't have disputed it, and pretended he was decent like that. But Jack was too good at making him honest.

"I could have lied, Jack. It would have been easy."

"So you could both just continue being unhappy together? That doesn't sound very easy to me."

Cal blinked away, because Jack was right, as usual.

He watched the clear shapes of the other lifeboats, drifting away from the ship. There was that deja-vu feeling again, and then he remembered. He'd dreamt about it, or some interpretation of it, only a few hours ago.

Rose's boat was following the rest of them now, and she'd be safe.

Cal curled his hand, full of tension, around the rail of the ship.

"I keep thinking this is all a dream. Or a nightmare. It keeps changing like that."

"I prefer to think it's real," Jack said, with no hesitation at all.

"Even when we might die?"

"Yes."

In a motion that was decided more or less for them, the crowd began to ripple like the ocean itself, and Cal and Jack were jarred and pushed along the decking, away from the last boarding lifeboat.

Ruth was getting into it, the diamond still clutched tight in her hand. Near to her, a father was saying goodbye to his daughter, and Cal knew that she wasn't going to see him again.

He turned quickly to Jack, and tried to smile.

"I don't know if I can keep you safe anymore, Jack."

"I don't expect you to."

Jack placed his hands on Cal's shoulders, squeezing them a bit.

"But we still have every chance. So we can't give up, right?"

It was strange, how much optimism Jack might inspire.

Cal wasn't very optimistic at the best of times, but now here they were, trapped aboard a sinking ship, and when he looked at Jack it was like they might still have a chance. No matter how improbable it actually was.

Jack was too good at that, making things seem possible.

Cal sneered faintly.

"Stop trying to inject some honest to goodness positivity into me, Dawson. I think I'll soon be sick on the wretched stuff."

Jack grinned at him.

Then, as the last explosion of white light dazzled the sky, and the crowded deck brought them roughly back to the present, he took Cal's hand.

"Stay with me now."

 


	7. Imagined

Titanic had affectionately been called the 'Ship of Dreams', and though Cal could appreciate the sentiment, he'd never actually been one for sentiment itself.

He didn't usually dwell on dreams, anyway.

They didn't serve any purpose in daily life. They couldn't whisk up an action plan and satisfy a business deal. They couldn't tell him what sort of strategy he should consider the next time someone questioned said action plan. They couldn't answer to his father, or try to remind him that he had a backbone, sometimes.

They couldn't do anything useful like that.

"We need to go to the other side of the ship," Jack said. "Don't lose sight of me."

Cal nodded. "I won't."

But Cal thought he could appreciate the irony now, as he gripped Jack's hand again, and didn't want to let go.

He'd only known Jack Dawson a couple of days, and yet every hour between them had been like a turbulent but not entirely unwanted dream.

Even if it didn't serve any purpose, as dreams tended not to, Cal thought perhaps that wasn't so important anymore. He clutched Jack's hand a bit tighter.

The main prerogative should have been survival, and he remembered that when they found Lovejoy; still faithful and waiting, on the other side of the ship.

"Sir," Lovejoy said, with barely the suggestion that Jack was there too. "I'm afraid the last available lifeboat has gone."

Cal nodded, the realisation was unpleasant but not so surprising.

Then he felt a hand, gripping his arm and pulling him back around.

Jack was staring at him as though he might be mad. That was no surprise anymore, either.

"...you could have gotten on a lifeboat?"

Cal smiled, with as much disparagement as he could muster.

"First class does have it's perks, Dawson. I thought you'd have gathered that by now."

" _Cal_..."

The ship shuddered and creaked, and then the lights around the windows dimmed to black. There was a marked silence, before they flashed back on again, and the crowd became violent with panic.

The crush against the railing was brief but excruciating, and Cal wondered for a fleeting moment if he would prefer to die like that.

He could only watch on instead, and reach out far too late, as Jack was pushed, and then slipped over the side of the railing.

Unthinking, Cal leaned over the side, shortly relieved to see Jack sprawled on the promenade deck and lifting himself back up.

_He was alright._

As the crowd began to ebb, Cal shoved through them, clutching at a rage and trying to find the culprit, because he was powerless to do anything else.

" _You!"_

Some man in a top hat, who probably didn't know any better than himself.

Cal scrunched a fist and started towards him.

" _Sir_."

It was Lovejoy who pulled him back.

"Perhaps it might be more prudent to find the Dawson lad first? And let me deal with this."

Lovejoy's face was a calm amongst the terrible storm, and Cal realised he didn't have to explain himself. Not to Lovejoy.

"...yes. Of course."

He hardly ever smiled at his valet; it just wasn't done. And he still didn't now.

Instead he extended an arm, finding Lovejoy's grip in a parting handshake.

"Good luck."

"Good luck, sir."

8

Even after all that had happened, Cal still didn't really know.

Maybe Jack was just a blip. Or an experiment that had gotten drastically out of hand. But he'd gone after Jack once before, so why break the habit of a few unprecedented hours?

He raced down the staircase, paying no mind to surprised attendants. It was only Andrews, stood stoic and still in the dining hall, that caught his reluctant attention.

Cal dithered in the doorway, and Andrews looked at him with a small smile.

"Mr. Hockley. Did you find your valuables?"

Cal blinked, in a moment of honest confusion.

"Excuse me?"

"Your valuables. Or whatever you wanted in the crew quarters. Did you find them?"

"...oh."

Andrews said it far better, even if he had no idea, and Cal could have smiled at him.

"Yes...I suppose so. Something like that."

He left Andrews with good luck wishes, though they all seemed for naught now. Those who were trying to be dignified about it, and suggesting they would 'go down like gentleman' might have been wearing very intricate masks of denial. Cal could see the fear in their eyes. He felt it too, obviously, and his heart kept dropping in his chest, telling him to go back. He was still a coward.

Jack met him on the promenade, and his embrace was unforgiving. He spoke furiously but softly, in Cal's ear.

"You had a lifeboat waiting for you, and you  _still came after me_?"

Cal gritted his teeth.

"Don't remind me. Just add it to the ever surmounting list of things I'm going to regret before we die."

Jack flinched, like another chink in his not-so-invincible armour.

"You're _mad_ , Cal. Completely mad."

"I think we established that a while back," Cal smiled against his shoulder. "You'll break my ribs, Dawson."

The hug fell away when the ship made another agonised sound, and Cal and Jack looked over the edge of the promenade, where the waterline was gradually moving, up and up.

Jack turned to Cal.

"It'll be okay," he spoke with an assurance that didn't really translate to his face.

Cal searched it for something else anyway. He wanted to be wrong.

"Are you scared, Jack?"

"No."

Cal smiled a bit. "You're a good liar."

"Hah. Almost as good as you."

The dig of nails in his palm was painful, but Cal did not mind, and he let Jack tilt his head, in a motion that was almost a kiss. Cal wouldn't have minded that either.

He watched Jack's face, and nothing else existed for a moment.

"Jack-"

Then all the lights went out, dissolving everything to black. There must only have been a few seconds of baited silence, but time had frozen between them, and Jack's fingers were so slight in Cal's hair. His voice was barely above a whisper;

"Are you still scared?"

His mouth was delicate, the lightest brush of a sensation. Cal reached an arm around his back, frantic to preserve the feeling.

"...no, I'm not."

It was too dark to see anything, besides the vague outline of Jack's face. So Cal steeled himself and simultaneously forgot himself, and leaned the rest of the way in.

He kissed Jack properly, and more fervently than he'd ever dared to kiss anyone.

It was kind of terrible that it took apparent death for him to admit what he actually wanted. But he was admitting it, in  _some_  form, and surely that was what mattered in the end?

He wouldn't have had suitable words, anyway. Sentimentality was not his thing.

The ship shuddered again as they broke apart, and Jack's eyes seemed to gleam, as clichéd as it was, like the stars in the clear sky.

Cal looked at the ground, too overwhelmed by his own impudence.

"I didn't mean to-"

"I hope you  _did_  mean to," Jack told him, and caught his wrist. "And I hope you mean to do it again."

They neared the very edge of the railing, and the sea was shockingly calm; a brutal contrast to the slanting chaos aboard the ship. It was descending very visibly now, and there was no time left.

"Are you ready?" Jack asked.

If it had been anyone else, Cal would have hesitated. But he didn't, and that was how he knew.

Jack couldn't have been a blip.

They dropped into the sea together, and Cal thought he'd fallen into knives.

88

88

He didn't think he'd be able to breathe again.

The water seemed to creep into his bones, and it would have been easy to let it swallow him up. Then he remembered Jack.

He began to swim, and noticed the sky, which was alight with tiny pin pricks of stars. They might have been pretty, had he been the type to appreciate such minor things. But he wasn't, and he swept around in the water, trying to catch a glimpse of Jack.

Then a hand grasped his shoulder.

"Over here."

They swam a short but struggled distance, before Cal thought he might give up, then there was something hard hitting his chest.

"Get up, get on it," Jack ordered.

Cal held onto the edges of what looked to be a large floating table top, and hauled himself up with an effort that persecuted his limbs. He swung around, grabbing Jack's arms, and dragged him up.

Jack scrambled, and though the table tilted dangerously, there was room enough.

They both lay exhausted on their backs for a little while, as water seeped all around them. The sickly yellow lights of the Titanic flashed and lit up the sky on occasion, though it was becoming less and less frequent.

Jack nudged Cal in the side.

"We...we can't stay like this."

Cal reached across, tentative and aware of their fragile position, and then realised Jack was pulling away.

" _No-_ " he grabbed Jack's arm before he could move. "You can't do that...you can't leave."

"We can't stay like this."

" _You'll die, you moron_."

" _You'll_  die," Jack said.

"I don't care."

He did care of course, but the idea of Jack dying was much more horrific somehow. Perhaps the prospect of it was more frightening; to be left there in the middle of the ocean, alive, but alone.

Cal curled his fingers around Jack's wrist.

"I  _don't_ care," he repeated, as if he could make it any more convincing. "I don't."

"You doth protest too much," Jack joked, weakly.

Cal was not deterred. If anything, it only spurred him on.

He was stubborn like that.

He started to move, back toward the slip of the table, where water was still slowly spreading onto it.

Jack cursed, and it was amusing, because Cal had never heard him speak like that before. Nor had he ever seen his face like that.

" _Don't be so stupid_ ," Jack said, and pulled him roughly back.

Cal tried to hide his surprise, round a glare.

"...what was that for?"

"If I can't leave, neither can you."

"You can't stop me."

The table rocked, suggesting it might fail them.

Jack pressed a hand slowly to Cal's chest; the pressure there was enough to tell him to stay put, but he wouldn't.

They stared between each other instead, and though it was dark, Jack's face was so tense and alive with emotion. It almost hurt to look at him like that.

"I'm sorry," Jack said.

"...what?"

"I'm sorry," Jack repeated, and his sigh was shaken, iced breath snaking around his words. "Rose's mother was right. I ruined everyone's lives."

Cal leaned slowly back.

"What are you talking about? You haven't ruined anyone's lives, Dawson."

"...I did. I shouldn't have met Rose. I shouldn't have met you. I broke you two apart..."

Beyond them, the ship made a rattled groaning sound, as a creature might that was in absolute misery.

Cal looked at it bleakly, and then imagined the ship's majesty when he'd first boarded her; how  _beautiful and lavish_ , how she had invited him into another world. Into something that might have been too good to be true. Now she was disappearing before their eyes, completely unrecognisable.

_So much had changed, and in so little time._

Cal blinked at Jack.

"Rose and I were already apart. You didn't make it any worse than it already was."

Jack shook his head.

"I shouldn't have got involved."

Cal clenched his jaw, ignoring the numbed ache in his bones as he shifted his body, to face Jack. He gathered Jack's icy hand in his own.

"Don't say that. Not _now,_ " he pressed his fingers around Jack's, with urgency. "Not when I'm sitting here with you, and you're the only damn reason I'm sitting here at all... don't even  _dare_  to think it, Dawson."

Jack's mouth trembled. He shuffled closer, so that their shoulders touched.

"...alright."

Cal nodded curtly, because apparently he was still too uptight to give good reason for his words, even  _now._

_Useless._

He stared ahead, and saw shapes of people, struggling between ocean and ship, trying to preserve the lives that were most precious to them.

It could barely have been fathomed before. Cal wasn't heartless, but he  _was_  practical, and self-preservation was important, as the Hockley name might like to remind him.

But now he could recall couples dancing and laughing and crying, insignificant levels beneath him, and Jack's hands and his mouth and his laugh. And it seemed to make much more sense that way.

Cal took an uneven breath, but it was like a relief.

"You didn't ruin my life, Dawson. You just made me realise, I wasn't living it in the first place."

He didn't expect it, but Jack's hand, ice-cold as it was, was desperately wanted on his cheek.

They both watched, in disparate silence, as the ship disappeared beneath the waves.

8

8

The screams had stopped, or maybe it was just that it was getting harder to hear them.

Cal wasn't sure.

He was trying to keep his eyes open and watch the stars. He'd never really done that before. Every now and then he forgot that he might be dying in the middle of the ocean, and that Jack was there, talking to him in trembling breaths about pointless things.

"...so we have to do that..."

Cal didn't know what they had to do, but he nodded anyway, because it made Jack continue talking, and his voice was like a little beacon of something like hope. He wasn't sure when he'd become so optimistic about that sort of thing.

"...I nearly punched a man because of you, Dawson."

It came to him suddenly, and he wanted to laugh at the superfluous memory. And his own ridiculousness for thinking about it.

Jack's laugh was more like a shudder. "...what?"

"The one who knocked you down onto the promenade. I wanted to punch him..."

"...oh," Jack laughed again. "I would've liked to see you punch a guy out, Cal."

"He would have thrown me overboard, you realise."

"I'd have come save you, though," Jack said.

His arm twisted a bit further around Cal's back, as he turned onto his side.

The heat between them was so slight, but Cal could still feel Jack's heart, as they faced each other. A slow but assured beat.

Cal thought he could fall asleep to it.

"...Cal," Jack whispered.

Cal opened his eyes.

"...mm?"

Jack was smiling at him.

"We still need to dance," he said. "Tomorrow, remember."

"...I remember."

It seemed another world ago, but Cal could remember. Every last detail, no trouble at all.

He leaned closer to Jack, spikes of frost catching between their foreheads, and the chilled air coiling between their mouths, as close as they were.

Jack's smile stretched a little.

"You have to promise, though.  _Tomorrow_."

His fingers twitched, clinging to Cal's more tightly, as he closed the gap between them.

Cal hardly felt his mouth, too numbed by the cold.

He managed to moved his arm around Jack's back instead, into the faintest semblance of an embrace.

Jack's mouth lingered, and Cal closed his eyes, imagining it was tomorrow already.

"...tomorrow then, Jack. Tomorrow we'll dance."

He imagined it again, and then again.

He might even have dreamt about it, as Jack's heat and face faded away.

8

8

8

8

When he opened his eyes, the sky was a bright but diluted pink, and he thought that he had died.

Then, as ambient sounds became words, and remnants of memory slowly began to fall back into place, he remembered everything.

He mostly remembered Jack.

_Reckless desire, and the thrill of heartbeats and mouths, crushed together with the heat of skin, and hands that knew exactly what they wanted..._

Cal raised an arm, shading his eyes against the harsh morning light. A hand was clutching his elbow, and an authoritative voice was asking him if he could sit up.

Cal did, very slowly.

"Sir, are you able to stand up, sir?"

As the shape of the Carpathia came into brilliant focus, Cal began to understand that he was alive, and that Jack was not there.

_Jack was not there._

"...sir, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a moment..."

Cal gripped the side of the lifeboat. Jack was not there, and his chest and the world had become very hollow again.

Perhaps he had just been happy, for a little while.

_An imagined life._

"Sir, are you well enough to climb aboard?"

"...yes. I'm fine."

He wiped the warm sting roughly away from his eyes.

But it would have been impractical, at best.

 

 


	8. Epilogue

If it had been anyone else, Cal might have forgot about it.

Just carried on with his life, found a girl to settle down with, and mark that last chapter off as an experimental and rather confusing side step.

He was back on the straight and narrow now (so to speak), and trying to make sense of paperwork and listen to words that he needed to pay more attention to than usual.

"...Caledon, are you listening to me?"

Cal took another sip of his coffee, and offered the other man a tight smile.

"Yes. Of course I am."

He hadn't been, because he couldn't forget.

He wondered what Jack might have been doing right now.

"If I am going to hand this off to you, you understand that you can't be delicate about the procedure? Be brutal, dismiss who you need to. The business is our livelihood, Caledon."

"Obviously. I understand."

Probably he would have been in another country by now. Sketching someone else, kissing someone else. Doing whatever the hell he liked with someone else.

"And I assume you'll have it done by Friday."

"Sooner, if I can help it."

Cal tided the paperwork up on the tabletop, and offered a smile that could not extend to his eyes, even if he tried.

"Be seeing you tomorrow, Cal."

"Goodbye, father."

Cal waited for the door to clip shut, before he sank back into a chair, certain that he was alone again.

The house was too quiet, but then it had never been intended for one person.

Right now, Rose were supposed to be there, and maybe she'd be scowling beautifully, and making disparaging remarks about everything relating to his existence, but at least he wouldn't have been alone.

And it wouldn't have been so terrible, either. He could handle the predictable disapproval of his father, the idea that he might have been too soft with Rose from the out. He could even handle the comments that occasionally passed around at recent dinner parties, claiming Rose was a few unsavoury names.

Cal always shut them down, and said it was a 'mutual parting'. It was, in some sense.

_And nobody would ever know about Jack Dawson._

Late-afternoon sunlight spotlighted the envelope that sat half hidden by paperwork on the table. The elegant cursive of Ruth Dewitt Bukater was immediately recognisable, and Cal frowned at it and decided to ignore it, for perhaps the tenth time that day.

He swallowed down some more coffee, and tried, once again, to make some sense of the mess of paperwork. He imagined Jack and his mouth and his hands, instead.

" _Damn it._ "

That was the trouble. He couldn't forget.

He slammed the coffee cup down, and turned his attention to the drinks cabinet instead.

There was no use in pining after the dead, but he could at least allow himself to become inebriated because of it.

8

There was certainly no use in it at all, because Jack arrived on his doorstep two days later.

He appeared very well and extremely alive.

88

 

 

 


End file.
